brad's Experience

Author's Rating:

Pros: Form factor is brilliant. Keyboard. Standard features. OS X.

Cons: One button trackpad. Annoying trackpad. Only two USB ports!

The Bottom Line: 
The 12" Powerbook remains a popular model today. It's still quite relevant. I love it. Check out the review.

Author's Review
The 12" Powerbook G4 1.5 gigahertz notebook is the best notebook computer I've owned.

Is it still relevant? Very much so. This is the last of the 12" models that Apple manufactured. After this, Apple moved to the Intel chips and released the "MacBook" in a 13.3" widescreen version. That is currently Apple's smallest notebook computer (bigger than the 12", subject of this review).

Many Apple fans were disappointed when Apple went away from the 12" form factor. The 12" is relatively narrower than the 13.3" widescreen and it has more vertical screen space, which is useful for documents. This is a notebook a person generally uses as very portable, often while traveling. I use it for taking notes in class and so I carry this thing around frequently.

It runs quite fast, despite relatively old hardware. "Quite fast" of course is subjective, but believe me when I say that this thing is plenty fast enough to do your Office applications and your Web browsing. I have not used it for any multimedia whatsoever, except for playing iTunes.

So in short, anybody looking for an inexpensive, ultra-portable Mac notebook should look at this model first. I bought mine off eBay and I couldn't be happier.

The 1.5ghz G4 processor inside is a workhorse, despite the G4 reputation. This system seems every bit as nimble as my G5 1.8hz iMac, and obviously the G5 has more horsepower than the G4. Nevertheless, however it is the case, this system is very fast, quick responsive, and plenty powerful enough to drive today's Office applications.

My machine has 1.25 gigabytes of RAM installed, the max. I recommend one gigabyte for anybody running OS X. You can run it with less, probably with 768 megs quite comfortably, but I just don't want to chance it. So I made sure to get a machine with enough RAM. The installed RAM on my machine keeps it responsive, with little or no hang time on any applications. Granted, pretty much all I run on this thing are MS Office apps and Firefox. I don't even have Acrobat installed on this thing, for example (which reminds me that I ought to get around to doing that).

The form factor is just brilliant. Again, this is many Mac users' all-time favorite notebook design. There is a big number of us out there using this machine - in the 12" form factor. It's just so well designed and compact, yet powerful (hence Powerbook). I considered a 12" iBook, but even the latest iteration of that line just didn't compare to the Powerbook. You can compare specs at everymac.com.

The design is an aluminum enclosure, which is in stark contrast to that of the plastic enclosure of the iBook. iBooks are great, don't get me wrong. In my situation, I cared more about what was under the hood than the enclosure. But it is worth mentioning that this machine is much more sturdy and rugged than any iBook. Just the way the lid (screen) flips up is nice and fluid and on aluminum hinges, rather than the somewhat flimsy nature of the iBook.

The keyboard is crammed onto the form factor, but it's a full keyboard with full-sized keys. Obviously, no number pad, but short of that I love typing on this thing. The keys are fairly shallow but very responsive. I love the keyboard.

The trackpad is a pain in the rear. This is the part of Apple that I absolutely despise, and it is the one-button doctrine that Apple has abided by since all-time. I can't stand the one-button track pad. It's disgusting. I carry a USB mouse along with the machine wherever I go. The trackpad on the machine is disabled. Being a 12" form factor, the trackpad is so close to the keyboard that inadvertently touching it is unavoidable, so typing on the keyboard is just much easier with it disabled. You can disable it in the System Preferences.

Ports. This thing has as DVI out for a second display or mirrored display. In typical Apple fashion, they're a little ahead of their time, so of course all of us with VGA monitors need that adapter. Thankfully, the guy who sold it to me off eBay sent one along. Otherwise, it works great. I plug it into a 15" LCD that I have from an older system and use that monitor for when I'm at my apartment.

It needs more USB ports. This was enough to tick me off, also. Only two frigging USB ports. Obviously, one is used up with the mouse, so that leaves just one. I need two more ports to get my Seagate portable drive to mount. Otherwise, the port is used for a hub that is used to connect a printer and stationary USB backup drive. Was it that difficult to engineer around only two USB ports? For the record, they are USB 2.0, in case anybody is wondering.

It has one Firewire port. Probably adequate, but for a Powerbook, maybe two would have been nice.

My system has a combo optical drive (CD-RW, DVD-ROM), so no DVD burner. That was a minus, but I knew what I was going to do with this computer, so it really wasn't an issue for me. Still, if we're talking about what's relevant today, we really ought to have a DVD burner in our machines. This model does not, although it shipped optional with a "Superdrive" (DVD burner). So if you're looking on eBay, this model is available with a DVD burner.

Video ram is 64 megabytes and is standalone - an NVIDIA. Even today, 64 megs ought to be plenty for your garden variety Quicktime videos, downloaded video content, or streaming video on the Web.

The hard drive runs at 5400 RPM, as opposed to 4200 RPM on the iBook line, so the bottleneck is reduced with the Powerbook line. My machine came with 60 gigs. You can find models that shipped with 80 gigs.

No gigabit Ethernet, only Fast Ethernet. It does have a modem, however (current MacBooks do not).

Wireless G (802.11g) is standard on this model; you can't find a model without it. Bluetooth 2.0 is also standard.

No expansion slots.

You cannot boot OS 9 with this machine (although it is supported in emulation).

Dimensions: 1.18" x 10.9" x 8.6". Average weight is 4.6 pounds.

Battery life. The advertised rate of 5 hours is an outright lie. A brand new battery will get you three hours of moderate use (playing a DVD). That's about the max from my experience. Mine came with a new battery and as of right now, it is down to about 90 minutes max usage. Overall, a fairly efficient machine, although the battery life is a bit disappointing.

That's about it. I run OS X Tiger (10.4) on this thing. Technically, it is capable of running Leopard (10.5). I don't have any plans to upgrade to Leopard at this time. Tiger runs smooth as silk and I couldn't be more pleased. I am so much more productive on this thing versus Windows XP that it is ridiculous. Expose', Dashboard, Spotlight, and the need to basically do zero maintenance on the machine all just contribute to a great user experience. I love it.

I paid $925 for mine and that was back in April. So I imagine you can find one for less than that, although maybe not as much less as normal since this model is still very popular.

Oh, maximum screen resolution is 1024x768. That's very important to a lot of people. But it's adequate for me.

I highly recommend the 12" Powerbook G4 1.5ghz notebook.