Re: What to choose? Mac or PC?
This one time, at band camp, Serge Rey wrote:
>i just (about 1 month) ago acquired a powerbook (g4 15" 800mhz) and put
>debian on it (dual boot with os X). i also use a thinkpad x20 and i have
>a vaio z505r.
PowerBook 1Ghz G4, the last of the TiBooks (got it the week before Apple
announced the new AlBooks).
>3) the slot drive works for dvd reading as well as cdrw. for the x20 i
>need to attach the ultrabase to get these options and that makes the
>weight exceed that of the powerbook.
This one came with the SuperDrive, so it can burn DVDs too. I haven't yet
had the need to do that, so I haven't tried playing with it yet.
>4) battery life. apple claims 5 hours but i think that would be with
>very low lighting and light work. using full brightness and lots of
>compiling, i typically get 3.5 hours.
I typocally get 4.5 hours with the backlight set to level 1. The F1 and F2
keys are trapped by the kernel and automagically switch the brightness, no
need to do anything fancy with external apps.
'course, now I'm using it on the train between work and home, so I don't
need more than 2 hours battery life -- the charger is so tiny it fits in my
bag with no hassles. Apple's designers rock :-)
>5) it comes with OS X so if you dual boot you can explore BSD :).
Useful for watching quicktime movies and iMovie, I've found. I also plan to
port some of my software to MacOS X but haven't gotten around to it yet.
>1) one button mouse. major design flaw if working in X. simple fix is an
>external usb mouse, but sometimes you don't have room for a mouse - i fly
>coach :)
willow% cat /etc/sysctl.conf
dev/mac_hid/mouse_button_emulation=1
dev/mac_hid/mouse_button2_keycode=68
dev/mac_hid/mouse_button3_keycode=87
With the kernel set up to enable these sysctl options, you can use F10 and
F11 as your middle/right buttons. Takes a bit of getting used to... the
trackpad and buttons are certainly no match for an external mouse, so
keyboard navigable applications are a real plus ;-)
>2) airport card. my reception seems to be ok despite reports by other
>tibook owners that this can be lousy. at the moment i'm having problems
>with some network apps - ssh/scp work fine on the aiport but browsing is
>not so good (time-out problems). the onboard nic works just fine
>however.
Interesting, I haven't seen anything like this. Both my airport and the
onboard ethernet port work with no dramas. perhaps your wireless has a lot
of noise?
>3) no real hibernation mode on the g4's only sleep. whether the latter
>works or not seems to be a hit or miss proposition on the tibooks. on my particular
>configuration the machine enters sleep mode but seldom comes back to
>life.
yeah, this sucks. I can't suspend from X (this model comes with the radeon
9000 M9 chipset) as the machine turns itself off when the lid is opened
again. sleeping at the console recovers but the screen is full of
artifacts.
>1) external video. i've seen reports that the radeon 7500 card under the
>powerpc port won't support using an lcd projector but i've yet to test
>this.
I'm going to be experimenting with this on the weekend, I'll be writing a
report on it to the -powerpc mailing list.
--
jaq@debian.org http://people.debian.org/~jaq
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