i-i-i
Well I finally bought an iBook. I’ve been considering getting one for over a year and a half.
The prices have been coming down and the specs have been going up so it was a matter of waiting until the deal was attractive enough to lay down the cash.
Recently the base level (read cheapest) iBook has gone from being a G3 800MHz, 128MB RAM, 30GB HDD and CD-Rom drive machine to being a G4 800Mhz, 256MB RAM, 30GB HDD and a slot-loading DVD-Rom/CD-R/W combo drive machine. The operating system has also been upgraded to 10.3 from 10.2. An extra $129 US if purchased separately.
So I bought the base model and upgraded the Ram to 640MB and added a wireless lan card (Airport Extreme) The discounts on the machine and the Ram upgrade (totalling 12,000 yen) meant that I effectively got the wireless lan card for free.
Here are some of the things I like about it:
The nice design touches, like the latch for the lid/screen that disappears when the screen is open. The charger/ac adaptor with two types of connection, one for travelling and one for the house. The indicator lights on the battery that show you the level of the charge it holds even when the system is off. The light on the plug also shows you that the laptop is charging or charged. The slot loading drive is nice too, you never have to worry that you are pressing down too hard on the CD tray.
Things that just work, like the wireless lan. I wanted a laptop that would be totally wireless, charge up the battery, and unplug all connections. I tried getting the Thinkpad working with a wireless card but after a month or trying I never got it to work reliably. In the end I plugged an ethernet cable into it but that was only practical in the living room.
The iBook’s wireless connection on the other hand took 5 minutes to get working from boot-up. 5 minutes! From someone who has never used OSX before. And the connection is totally stable, even after putting the machine to sleep and then waking up the connection is just there as if by magic. Another thing that just works is the sleep function. Close the lid and the machine sleeps, open it and it wakes up. Every time without fail. Laptops running Windows also have this function but sometimes it doesn’t work right. Most of the time it does but not all the time. It is important because if I am ready for bed and I shut the lid, I want the machine to sleep, if it keeps running there is the possibility of it overheating or I might hear the whirl of the hard drive. Or if I take the laptop out say to work at a cafe I don’t want the machine to be running as I am walking to the cafe as the journey might damage the hard drive. I also don’t want to boot up the machine from cold when I reach the cafe. I just want to close the lid at home and open the lid at the cafe and start working.
The battery life is fairly good. A full charge typically lasts me between 3 1/2 to 4 hours with the wireless lan on all the time. This fits in well with my usage pattern, I charge it up, unplug and use it until the battery has about 10 minutes remaining. I usually charge it up overnight.
I don’t want to give the impression that it is all good though. But this blog entry is long enough as it is, I might write more in a future blog entry.
