G4 Titanium Powerbook

The future is Titanium

At times, returning a product turns out to be one of the most difficult accomplishments. This time, however, the problem wasn’t related to late couriers or other mishaps in transit, but only because the product really, really impressed me. Apple’s latest top-of-the-line laptop left its mark on me during the all-too-brief period of my test.
Some time ago, Apple Canada had finally managed to send me a unit for a test drive, despite the very high demand. The system was a 500mhz G4 processor with 256 MB of Ram, equipped with everything one could ask of a laptop, i.e. Airport Wireless card and DVD-ROM drive. But aside from technical characteristics, the entire system is a real piece of art.
Its design strikes the eye as soon as the machine comes out of its packing. Entirely built in titanium (hence the name of G4 Titanium), with a very sophisticated metallic look, the portable is just one inch thick and comes with an extra wide 15.2-inch TFT screen. The weight is also very good, in comparison with its predecessors: just 5.3 pounds. Sitting on my desk, this little gem made my two portables — a one-year-old Dell and a Powerbook G3 — look like museum specimens.
Maybe it was the futuristic design, the unusual metallic look, or that incredible screen able to perfectly reproduce DVDs; in any case, the G4 seemed to be years in advance. The default operating system is Mac OS 9.1, but the laptop comes with Mac OS X pre-installed. Although the new OS X is a pleasant experience, OS 9.1 remains the system of choice if one wants to exploit the machine’s potential in full, e. g. for DVD playback.
The PowerBook G4 ships with Apple’s easy to use video editing software, iMovie 2, and this, coupled with its FireWire (IEEE-1394) ports, turns it into a veritable portable video recording studio. There’s also a copy of Apple’s iTunes, where you can import music from CDs, play back MP3s, access internet radio stations within an abstract framework of visual effects portraying the various rhythms. What is missing is an office suite such as AppleWorks for writing documents or spreadsheets.
In addition to the already mentioned FireWire ports, the G4 Titanium comes with 2 USB ports, a 56 KB modem, a 10/100 Base-T Ethernet card for network connections, a PCMCIA slot, an infra-red (IrDA) port, VGA and S-Video output ports and a 20 GB hard drive.
Inside the titanium shell the Apple engineer hid the antennas for the wireless connections that can be used thanks to the Airport card (optional) installed under the keyboard.
At first, my wireless experience was pitiful, due to the abysmal performance I managed to obtain. I was repeatedly disconnected from the Internet, and could not receive any signal when over 10 metres from the router. In the end the real problem was my LinkSys Wireless router, and everything went back to normal when I borrowed a friend’s Airport Base station.
Working with this laptop was very pleasant, considering the performance this computer is able to achieve. Battery life is much longer than the average in today’s portables, reaching up to five hours even though my personal experience with heavy processor usage was closer to 3 hours. Anyway be careful: titanium is a good heat conductor, and my advice is to avoid holding the laptop in your lap.
The keyboard is easy to adapt to, while the trackpad can take a little getting used to, especially for people who do not keep their eyes on their hands.
Although far from exceptional, the speakers represent an improvement on previous versions. Personally I prefer to keep using a nice pair of external speakers such as the Harman/Kardon Soundsticks.
The PowerBook G4 comes in two standard configurations. The first uses a PowerPC G4 400MHz processor, 128MB SDRAM and a 10GB hard drive for $3899 CDN. The second will have the PowerPC G4 500MHz processor, 256MB SDRAM and a 20GB hard drive. It’ll cost $5199 CDN. Moreover, up to September you’ll get a free SmartDisk VST FireWire CD/RW Drive to create custom CDs of anything you want, and after that a Lexmark inkjet printer.
Even though the price is not for everyone, considering its performance and the quantity of features, the G4 Titanium definitely ranks among the best laptops on the market.

For more information visit www.apple.ca

Publication Date: 2001-08-26
Story Location: http://tandemnews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=318