Now that I’ve a little more time to play with the G4 PowerBook, I feel like I can speak with a touch more authority about my experience rather than having to blather about how great it looks coming out of the box. Though of course it does look great. =)
Despite Trinity freezing during transfer once when I was using FireWire Target Disk Mode to transfer files between the machines, everything moved over relatively smoothly. Apparently Apple’s new G5s have some kind of migration software included so you can automatically upgrade from one machine to the next. That would’ve been handy, because getting old info onto a new machine isn’t for the inexperienced. Just porting over all my email (dating back almost 10 years now) was tricky. (You set up new Mail accounts on the new machine then copy in the the specific mailboxes from the old accounts afterward.)
Dot Mac came in handy for sync the Address Book, iCal, and Safari bookmarks. Most everything else is just a matter of copying and either importing or configuring. It’s not hard if you know what you’re doing, but it is time-consuming. Apple’s migration tool would be a big help.
The G4 PowerBook’s 15.2″ LCD screen’s widescreen aspect ratio (4:3, I think) is useful, but not so much that I’d want to have to use it as my only screen on a full-time basis. I’m very happy to have a bigger monitor on the way. Still, the G4’s screen makes it easier to manage GUI windows than Trinity’s 14.1″ display, and it’s brighter and noticeably more crisp as well. For a portable machine, I have no complaints.
Indeed, thus far I’d have to say I have no complaints whatsoever. The keyboard is, now that I’ve had a day or two to type on it, clearly better than the Pismo’s, and I thought Trinity’s keyboard was fine. The SuperDrive remains untested by me except for loading CD-ROMs. I’m looking forward to watching a DVD or two, but given present time constraints it may be a few days.
The speed of the machine, which I commented on in part 1, is more evident upon greater usage. In other words, the more stuff I do that I used to do on Trinity, the more I notice that things are happening a lot faster. Thus far there have been virtually no slowdowns whatsoever, and this is on a machine with only 512 MB of RAM. I’m planning on bulking it up to 1.25 MB by year’s end (along with adding the AppleCare extended warranty, something I always recommend to laptop buyers).
I talked briefly last time about Apple’s music creation software, Garage Band. It is insanely easy to use if you have a little music software background, and creating a relatively cool tune has never been this simple. If you’ve got a machine capable of running it (minimally a G3-600), Garage Band is absolutely worth checking out. It’s part of Apple’s iLife ’04 software suite or available pre-installed on every new Mac.
[I’ve posted my first Garage Band creation, Mystic (the Jonah mix), in the Music section. See if you think it accurately expresses the happiness I’m feeling.]