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TiBook Review
I've been using this Titanium PowerBook (667 MHz, 1 G, 30 G) for several hours per day during most of the last week. The more I use it, the more I like it. Sure, there are problems but this is one amazing system. The strange thing is that for some things, the TiBook is faster than my desktop DP/500 (one recent observation: encrypting documents with GnuPG).
One thing that has surprised me is that I can get so much time on one battery if I deal with it reasonably. On Wednesday, I woke the system from sleep at 7:40 AM and ran on batteries until nearly 2 PM. Mostly, I was taking notes in BBEdit, but I also compiled a couple tools after making source changes did a few large searches in Sherlock, launched a lot of applications for miscellaneous tasks, etc. I had fully expected to have to switch batteries somewhere during the day. When it didn't happen, I was both surprised and happy. I am a lot more confident in my ability to milk a full day out of the TiBook even under load.
The internal IDE drive speed is better than I had expected, although the IBM drive is quite a bit more noisy than the Toshiba I had put in my Lombard a couple years ago. I've had no problems with Firewire and USB devices, but I do wish the port count had been reversed (I want two Firewire ports and one USB port instead of the other way around). The combo drive works. Writing CDs is slow, but functional, which is enough if you plan to use this as added portable functionality; not recommended as your standard disk burning mechanism. When CD's are inserted, the drive makes some pretty terrifying noise if you are not expecting it. After a bit of whirring sound, there is a fairly loud 'clunk' as the disk drops into the right spot. The first time I stuck in a CD I thought I had broken something.
At this point, I only have one main classic application remaining, MORE. Getting out of that problem is going to take some time (MORE is not only a classic application, it's a 68K application that was last updated in late 1991 to deal with '040 cache problems that the original Think 4 Pascal libs did not address). No one has yet created a real alternative, although many have tried. Since I have had to do a lot of editing this week, I've had classic up and running much of the time, with no ill affects on stability observed thus far. Next week I'll get XDarwin installed and see how that goes.
Although the screen is one of the highlights of the system (it's big and it's bright) there are some drawbacks. The thin screen is very susceptible to flexing, which means you need to exercise even more care than with previous PowerBooks. The screen also seems to get dirty more easily than previous screens (this could be because it's just easier to see, but I'm not sure).
The system provides a very complete unix solution, an excellent display, thin form factor, CD-RW and DVD-ROM and good battery performance. At $3,300, the TiBook is an outstanding value.
© Copyright 2002 Dave Ely.
Last update: 3/15/02; 11:12:01 PM.
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