[rescue] powerbook g4

[Christian J Hedemark]

On Tuesday, September 10, 2002, at 08:37 PM, Jonathan C. Patschke wrote:

> I'm still really trying to decide on a PowerBook G4 550, a PowerBook G3
> Pismo, or one of the new iBooks with the larger screen option.  I
> primarily use texty applications (XEmacs, vim, Netscape, and 
> occasionally
> Microsoft Excel), but I tend to have a lot of windows open, so a lot of
> screen real estate is a necessity.

I'm on one of the newer models, a G4 800MHz.  The horizontal real 
estate is great, especially for video editing.  But I've found it 
lacking for "texty applications".  Nothing too major though.

> What's the battery life like on the G4?

Not the five hours that Apple claims.

About 2 hours is the minimum I've had, and that is viewing DVD's full 
screen.

I've gotten a little better than 3 hours once, running nothing more 
than a word processor and a web browser against the local apache 
server.  No network connections enabled.  Running iTunes will eat into 
that quite a bit.

I suppose I average 2.5 hours having iTunes running, a few terminal 
sessions, network connection enabled (but not airport!), email client & 
web browser.

> cNet said they were
> disappointed, but their benchmark also involved continuously playing a
> DVD, which is not at all like what I'll be doing (although I suppose I
> will be hitting the disc for compiles and such).

I tend to save my work frequently so the disk never gets a chance to 
sleep.

There are various other options that I have turned on.  For example, 
the 800MHz CPU can be underclocked to 667MHz when running on batteries.

The external ports have really won me over.  I can plug into the 
S-Video input of a TV set to play my movies.  Gigabit ethernet onboard 
is sweet on those rare occasions where $client has an empty port for 
you, or you hook up with another TiBook user with a straight cable 
(auto-detects and engages crossover if needed) to swap files.  The 
airport is a letdown though.  Plan on getting a real PC Card adapter if 
you are going to be more than like 30 feet from your WAP.   I've got a 
Cisco Aeronet which is well supported under OS X.