After almost 3 years and two broken hinges, it was time to replace my goo' ol' PowerBook and the new one finally arrived last Friday. I ordered again the 15 inch version (and I really couldn't wait until the Intel Powerbooks are released, it's no fun working with a notebook with loose hinges…)
Although I liked the old design better (I hate to have important plugs on the right side, 'cause that's where I place my mouse and I'm not a big fan of too much rounded edges), I already don't want to trade it back.. The higher resolution (1440×960 vs. 1280×854), the faster processor (1.66 GHz vs. 1.0 GHz) and especially more RAM (2GB vs. 768 GB) make quite a difference. Other enhancements like built-in Bluetooth, built-in USB2, background-illumination of the keyboard and a faster video chip are nice-to-haves as well :)
There was only one disappointment on Friday afternoon… The battery is broken. It doesn't charge, it doesn't show any sign of life. A quick mail to tech-support revealed, that this is a known problem and the battery will get replaced (but why don't they check that, before they send it out, they had to open the box anyway to put more ram into it…). But then again, I learned to know a new feature of OS X 10.4.3. It supports real hibernation and is called “Safe Sleep”. Basically it means, no shutdown/startup cycle needed, if you move and don't have a battery :) It does that in a non-obtrusive and non-recognizable way. And it's almost as fast as the “old way” (which is still the default, if you have a battery). It works out of the box for the new PowerBooks. Close the lid, wait until the “heartbeat”-LED pulsates, remove the cord and move :) If you're fast enough (within a minute or so), it still starts immediately and doesn't have to load the memory from the harddrive (which is, what Safe Sleep does, put the RAM to the harddrive). See “ How to Safe Sleep (Hibernate) Your Mac” for more details.
And here some (shitty quality) pictures of the new one versus the old one. The new 15″ is slightly larger than my old one, but at least it still fits into my sleeve.
Note the broken hinge on the top right:
Screenshots. Although the resolution is not that much larger, it really makes a difference.
