Reasons to buy a Powerbook rather than a windows laptop...
 

I have recently switched from Windows to Mac (via a Powerbook G4) and I love it.

I am now on a crusade to persuade 2 friends to purchase Powerbooks. Both are Windows users, use PCs at work... MS Word, Powerpoint, Excel etc. and are thinking about Dell or Toshiba notebooks.

I have given them my thoughts. I was wondering what reasons those who are experienced could give for moving from a PC to a Mac?

Thanks.

Are you looking for PB related reasons?

1) 5 hour battery life
2) 15.1" screen
3) Ports, firewire, ethernet, usb, DVI(newer)
4) get a second battery, 5+5=10 hours YMMV depending on what your doing of course
5) Titanium (-)It does scratch easy, but that just means you need to take a little more care in handling. (+) It is beyond kool and draws much attention.
6) OSX
7) 5 hour battery
8) VPC-run windoze if needed
9) 5+5=10
10) you may actually start to like/love your computer.
...okay I'll stop with the battery thing but my friends who have laptops have 2 batteries and at most get in 2 hours of work while I'll still on one.

This is all opinion or fact depending on your POV.

:D

No .dll's!!
No Add/Remove programs. (Like it works anyway.)
Standard user interface. (Damn, why doesn't command-c copy in this app? - Gone)
Freedom to remove I.E.
OS X

- Quartz/Aqua is a work of art. You don't really appreciate that until you've stared at XP's cartoonish interface for a while.

- Drag and drop. Both platforms have it but by virtue of the way the Dock is implemented one is much more likely to realize its benefits on the Mac.

- Setting up a printer is merely non-intuitive, rather than torturous.

Andy

Its good to see evidence that Apple's "Switch" campaign is working! As for getting a PowerBook, beyond OS X being the greatest operating system of all time and the hardware being fantastic be sure to tell you friends about Apples great laptop support: I have a Pismo 400MHz, I bought mine at the same time a friend bought a Sony laptop. Since then my Pismo has worked flawlessly while he's had to reformat his Sony twice, which was especially devastating since he didn't have some really important files backed up. My Pismo has only had one hardware problem - the sound-out port got unsoddered because some genius poked at it with a pencil. I shipped my Pismo to Apple on a Monday, got it back the next Monday totally fixed free. Sony charged my friend about $1500 for fixing his laptop and then lost in it shipping somewhere in New Jesey.

Sell them on the looks and power of the machine :)

Oh and the MASSIVE screen it has :)

Plenty of good selling points on the G4 power books.

PowerMac = SILENCE
 

I myself haven't got a PowerBook but an old Toshiba laptop. My boss has a PowerBook and I'm always amazed about the fact that it is SILENT i.e. no fans. I don't know why this is the case, but I think that it's great. I'm now considering buying an iBook to replace my Toshiba, but I may not for one reason: I can't plug my old MP3 player into Macs (no drivers available) and networking over College facilities with Macs doesn't appear to work too well.

I *really* want one of these, but I do Windows development for a living. Unfortunately Visual Studio (and SQL Server, etc.) all run too slow in emulation to make it worth my while. :-(

So ... I chug along with my Windows laptop hoping that someday I can switch.
(In the meantime I'll enjoy my G4 at home!)

Time for some sanity.

Five hours? Sorry, give me a second to laugh.

Okay, I'm done.

PowerBook G4 battery life isn't as nice as Apple's marketing dorks would have you believe, despite it being possible to attain five hours of life:

1. Dim your screen all the way (well, right at the last notch);
2. Don't DARE use any ports at all;
3. Ditto the optical drive;
4. Use only a text editor or equally light app--don't even think about using that copy of Photoshop or FileMaker if you want five hours;
5. Enable every single energy-saving preference you can--processor cycling, speed reduction, etcetera;
6. And don't use OS X. Battery consumption in OS X is higher than it was in OS 9. This will likely change in 10.2, but for now, it just ain't happening.

Despite that stuff, I get great life out of my ten-month-old PowerBook. Two to three hours, depending on tasks, is nice to be able to rely on.

As for fans and noise, lemme tell ya, PowerBook G4s _do_ have fans, and they _are_ loud. If it happens to have an IBM hard drive, that's noisy, too. (Note that I didn't say it was a BAD drive, just a noisy one. IBM has traditionally made noisy notebook HDs. Though, their newer fluid-bearing drives seem to be quieter than past models.) Some PowerBook G4s use Toshiba drives, for example, so it might actually be fairly quiet a machine. Either way, when a Titanium's fan kicks on, you know it.

All that having been said, the PowerBook G4 is one of the best notebooks I've ever seen. I happen to adore mine. My motto's become something to reflect that, as well as a reason for getting one:

Life in widescreen is good.

These damned things are just as fast as a Winblows "laptop" (don't get me started on how I hate that word; how generic it sounds--I'm glad Apple calls theirs "portables" or "notebooks" when not using their proper names); an OS that works, as opposed to an OS that never seems to find the right drivers for "built-in" (read: OEM add-on) ports after an installation; and bar-none the best damn service and support in the industry. Only Dell comes close in that last respect.

Yes, you can put FreeBSD or Linux on a PC laptop. No problem there. If I had a ThinkPad or Latitude, that's what I'd do.

But I don't. I have a one-inch-thick (people seem to go ape**** over this part) portable EVERYTHING machine (okay, not quite, but you get the point) that runs FreeBSD under the best window manager out there.

Consistency, consistency, consistency. Even in the badly designed OS X applications' interfaces--cough, Internet Explorer, cough--there are things you can count on. Example? The OS X menu bar. Its design alone dictates a level--forces it, really--of application functionality consistency. Think about the structure of the menu bar:

[System][Application][Inter-application]

First, there's the Apple Menu, housing basic system commands like Log Out and Sleep (Restart? What's that?); the Application Menu, in which you'll find "Preferences" (99% of the time), "Quit" and "About [this application]"; and then the rest of that specific application's menus, like Edit (almost a system menu, since it always houses "Cut", "Copy", "Paste", "Clear", and "Undo") and Window (yay for this one, no joke, for sorting through lots of open windows in applications).

There's just lots and lots of thought about how the computer should function, and it shows.

And if anyone ever has any concerns that Apple doesn't think about _everything_, check out [http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/...tro/index.html] and think about how your Mac has been poured over in every aspect. I can't say the same for PCs. ("Hey, there's room for another useless non-keyboard button over here between the five 'Internet keys', guys!")

And of course, if all of this stuff doesn't work, just tell your friends how often your OS X machine crashes and ask them if they've had similar experiences with Windows.

Windows is, simply, the worst operating system--both functionally and cosmetically--I have ever used. When people ask me what I prefer, I always say Mac OS X. (It's easy to say that when you haven't crashed in seven MONTHS, I guess.)

I also don't seem to be leaking like an open flood gate security-wise, either. And when there IS a security exploit discovered, Apple gets rolling on a fix, and it's usually not long before it's available for download. Additionally, their security updates--and other updates, for that matter--don't break tons of things or MORE things than they fix. Yeah, there have been some notable exceptions, like the iTunes 2.0 installer debacle, but this is still much more than I can say for the Wonderful World of Windows. I don't cross my fingers and spin around in a pentagram circle every time I install an application or system update, because I know if the latest IE update hoses IE, I can just toss IE in the Trash.

Hooray for the ability to choose a freaking Web browser, right?

Heh. I've gone on long enough, I suppose. This has been my dual shiny copper discs. I have way too much time at work, no lie.


-/-
Mikey-San

I wouldn't be too hard on Apple for battery life.

My Windows laptop (HP Pavilion N5470 with a 1Ghz Athlon) advertised 3 hours of battery life.

In reality I might get 1.5 hours.

The first battery needed replacing only 6 months after I obtained this machine. (Fortunately it was under warantee ... which it no longer is so I'm praying that my battery survives.)

Mikey-San,

Too much time on your hands huh. Can I have your job? :)

Battery life, yeah it depends on what you do. I usually average 4+ hours though. (PB500) Yes, you should manage a little. Hmmm, let me watch a movie while I compile KDE and surf the net...You'll probably get an hour. Just watching a movie, full screen, I get between 2-3 hours which is just enough for most movies. Just remember it works the same way on PC laptops.

Fan. Yes. Quite loud when it kicks in. Perhaps, the newer models are quieter.

Other nice things(in no particular order):
Ports(usb, firewire[iPod-have port need to use it], S-Video, audio[in the new ones], ...)
PCCard slot- so you can get a card to hook up another monitor(1), already a monitor out(2), your screen(3), S-Video to TV(4). Don't know if it mirrors to TV but hey. And yes, I do need 3 monitors(damn Flash).
NIC card is included.

Keyboard. I'm sure there are nice keyboards for PCs but not any of the ones I've used.

Now if only Apple would take trade-ins.:D:D

Heh. No way, homes. Can't have this job.

I do all of the--ALL of the--Apple support for Virginia Commonwealth University. VCU is actually TWO campuses--a large, large medical campus and an academic campus across town--so that's even more impressive. It's a mostly Windows environment, but there isn't a Mac drought over here.

Essentially, I sit on my ass all day long often. I'm the Maytag repairman! (Though, I also handle a lot of other stuff in addition to the Apple support, so it's not always this slow.)

So, yeah, there's another selling/Switching point: A massive, major college has only ONE person doing Mac support, instead of an entire department or two. Even with Windows outnumbering Mac OS machines here, that's impressive, I think.


-/-
Mikey-San

1) Is the Windows/PC laptop you buy today going to be useful to you as your main computer 4 years from now? (he says, typing from his WallStreet vintage '98 PowerBook)

2) Can you run all the operating systems you need to be able to run (dual / triple / quadruple boot)? How easy is it to set up Linux, XP, WinME, and Win2KServer and boot from them as need be? (he says, currently booted in 9.0.4, with options to reboot natively in MacOS X 10.1.5, MacOS 8.6, MacOS 9.2.2, MacOS 8.1--plus, in emulation, every MS OS from MSDOS 5.0 through Win2KServer; Red Hat Linux; ancient classic MacOS Systems 1 through 6 in b&w; and System 7.5 in color)

2b) Can you install your programs ONCE and run them while booted from some, all, or most of the other operating systems? (most Carbon apps run after being installed just once from MacOS X, 9.2.2., 9.0.4, and usually from 8.6; most non-Carbon apps run after being installed just once from 9.2.2, 9.0.4, 8.6, 8.1, and the Classic environment of MacOS X)

3) How quickly can you walk into someone else's office, plug into their network, and gain access to files on their servers / print to their networked printers / send and receive email from your regular email account? (AppleTalk/AppleShare is incredibly simple to configure; TCP/IP is also easier to set up on a Mac, including multiple variations you can switch between after setting up once; SMB/NetBIOS protocol support is adequate, although better with 3rd-party wares)

4) Can you hook up a huge panoramic desktop monitor to your laptop and use it as your primary screen while using your laptop's TFT as a second screen to put toolbars and whatnot on? Set the big monitor to 2048 x 1536 while the laptop is at 1024 x 768? (all Macs are versatile with multiple screens. Depending on model you may need a CardBus card to take full advantage of 2nd monitor)

5) Ever gotten a PC virus? Did it destroy anything or make your computer crash? Do you worry about viruses? (I've had a Mac get a virus TWICE in my life, which is probably unusually high. The first time was in 1987 and I got infected with something that, left to its own devices, would have tried to display a silly message at Christmas time. The second time was in 1999--I got an old mid-80s-era virus from an old floppy disk in a pile of floppies that I was asked to examine and discard. My 1997-vintage freeware antivirus program Disinfectant caught it on reboot. All total, including Word and Excel macro viruses and HyperCard viruses there are probably fewer than 75 Mac viruses. Many of them won't run under System 7 or later. We breathe a lot easier than the PC folks do)

6) What do you boot from when your currently designates startup OS gets hosed and won't boot? (Macs boot from damn near anything, with ease. No BIOS settings to muck around in, just some override keys to hold down)

7) Mac users get to use MacOS. Using MacOS instead of Windows is like getting a massage instead of poking your eye with a sharp stick, in a million little ways.

:D :D

Yes, but you have to choose the machine _very_ carefully beforehand. If not, you may find yourself hunting for drivers, hunting for a PCMCIA card which is compatible with your machine _and_ for which you have the driver...
(My wife had a very,very hard time getting things to work on her notebook under freeBSD. Don't misunderstand me, freeBSD is a great OS ! It just isn't easy...)

Linux Rocks on a PC
 

This is a debatable topic. I have a new Powerbook and an old P3 1GHz .I have linux and WinXP on that. And i find Linux works fastest of all. And it is absolutely non-bloated. i have every thing in just 2.5GHZ including developers tools and all possible sers program unlike bloated OS X and Win XP.
But with the use of FINK, I guess one can get the niceties of linux to OSX.
Cheers

Actually, I've gotten very close to 5 hours with the newer M8244G/B battery on a Tibook 800.

I swithched to an AlumBook a few months back and generally get 3.5 hours out of it.

--Evan

I am looking to buy a widescreen laptop, and even though I am a proMac dude, it has to be Windows. I am buying it for remote LAN gameplay and Mac is out of the question. I also need to demonstrate my CD product (see below), and though it is OSX compatible, most folks will feel alot better seeing a Windows interface. But trust me, I would love to have that 15" aluminum beauty.

Why Powerbook?
 

At work I use a Toshiba Satellite running XP Pro. At home (thanks to my ever-tolerant spouse) I have a new 1.25 G Powerbook. Why choose a 'Book over a Windows laptop?

1) Rock solid OS. I've used several iterations of Windows over the years. XP is more stable than most. Even so, I have regular "meltdown" issues. Plus the point made by another reply: the XP visual interface is overdone, overlarge - cartoonish was his term, Salvador Dali surreal is mine. By contrast the X interface is crisp and grabbing. I think I work faster, better on this desktop.

2) If you ever travel with a laptop, a PB is thin, light for its size/power, and not quite wide enough to be genuinely annoying; runs pretty long on a battery charge, has a more sensitive touchpad and a crisper screen.

You can get most of this on a Windows laptop - thin, light, big crisp screen - but then you're paying as much or more for the device than you would for a PB.

3) Elegant and functional. I mentioned the lighted keys. I like the way all ports are along the sides - accessible yet not in the way. The key feel is great. The lines are clean and non-grabby, visually arresting. I immediately spot someone working Powerbook, at least one of the new ones.

4) MS Office apps run at least as well, and some actually better, as OS X versions than they do in their Windows renditions. I cross back and forth all the time. Once in a while a doc needs a rename before I can take it from Word for OS X to Word 97 for Windows and print it. That's the only hickup I've seen yet.

if you have to work, there's no choice ...
 

that's nice to see.
it seems that nearly everybody, who really has to deliver, relies on a mac...
see for yourself here
in this picture showing the people responsible for the successful mars-rover landing, three out of four laptops are powerbooks .