Issue Plagued MacBook Appreciates Pre-Used 12″ PowerBook G4 Demand

Reviews
September 9, 2006
0
138

At time of writing, our sources have reported that the MacBook have yet to plato in its development. The defect rate for MacBooks still ranks in the higher percentile range.

With that in mind, if you’re planning to pick up a spanking new MacBook now, be prepared for a possible visit to the Mac docs for an issue here and there. To be fair however, its an industry expectation with cutting edge products. Which will probably be ironed out over time, after several batch revisions. The only question that remains unanswered, is whether this is achievable since Apple’s decision to hop onto the Intel bandwagon. Before existing issues can be ironed out, Intel releases a ‘faster and better’ CPU the following quarter, introducing the possibility of more development issues. This is the bane of many hardcore Mac heads the moment Apple decided to go Intel.

If owning the latest Mac has to offer is your aim, then the MacBook still undeniably packs a good bang for your buck but if you’re concerned with reliability and maybe fuss about the size of things, then in our humble opinion, its a great time to go hunting for a good pre-used 12″ PowerBook G4. Getting the 1.5GHz spec 12″ PowerBook G4 (the last to roll off Apple’s production line for the 12″ PowerBook form factor) should keep most road warriors happy for a couple of years.

Getting one decked out with a SuperDrive is a bonus and if you ask us, something that is the norm these days with the size files are getting. It only makes sense to have a SuperDrive otherwise the alternative is to have a 12″ PowerBook G4 that is an information island.

The current ultra affordable MacBook pricing, has repressed the pre-used 1.5GHz 12″ PowerBook G4 prices, making it an ideal time to pick up the smallest Mac portable ever to come out of Cupertino’s design house. In short, its a buyers market.

As a standard upgrade, MacBook users are strongly advised to upgrade the RAM capacity to the maximum available to get the most out of its graphics performance. This is owing to its shared graphics processor architecture.

12″ PowerBook G4 enthusiasts on the other hand should take note that the G4-based Macs until today, has issues when viewing HD content, regardless of the amount of installed RAM. HD viewing tends to be jerky at best but if HD isn’t high on your list of wants, then the 12″ PowerBook G4 is still a viable cost effective consideration.

As a bonus,… the 12″ PowerBook comes shielded in sexy aluminium and comes equipped with a much better ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 with 64MB of DDR SDRAM in contrast to the MacBook shared graphics processor. If you’re lucky you might even source one custom built with an ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 with 128MB of DDR SDRAM dual-link DVI graphics card.