Apple iBook 12.1 in. Mac Notebook

This iBook is my first Mac. I come to it from the world of Intel/Linux, but I do use an iMac at work so this wasn't much of a switch in the sense that I was quite familiar with the OS and the Mac hardware in general. The fact that the iBook runs OS X Jaguar also played a part in my decision to move to the Mac. Having used Windows 3.1 through XP, Mac 8.6 through 9.2, every distribution of Linux you can think of, as well as Sun Solaris and two flavors of BSD, I believe that OS X is one of the strongest, most stable, most usable operating systems I've ever encountered.

Like almost everyone who buys a Mac for the first time, I took a lot of pleasure from the experience of opening the box and unpacking it. This aspect of the Mac experience caught me completely by surprise. I've never experienced it before, and I've bought a number of new computers since the mid-1980s. There really is no way to explain this except to say that the whole package is so well designed, so well put together, that even pulling out the power-adapter gave me a bit of a thrill. Go figure! Starting up the iBook for the first time was also a good experience, and within a couple of minutes I had OS X up and running.

If you're thinking of switching to Mac, or have never used a notebook computer before, there are probably a few things on your mind. I'll try to cover the things I was concerned about before I switched.

Speed — move from a mightily endowed 1.3 Gigahertz PC to a 700 Megahertz Mac?

Battery life — I've only owned used laptops before, where the batteries were basically expired, so I had no idea what to expect in this regard.

Relatively small 12.1 inch screen — Again, my PC has a 17 inch monitor, so I was a bit worried.

Compatibility with Windows — I don't use Windows much, but the rest of my family does, and I have to use a printer that's connected to a Windows machine.

I'll address those issues one at a time.

Speed. I'm not a Megahertz junky. To be honest, I can't tell much difference between my 400 MHz PII, my 1.3 Gigahertz AMD Duron, or my friend's 1.7 Gigahertz Athlon. In my experience, factors other than the CPU make a huge difference to the computing experience. For example, my 400 MHz PII rocked with a Voodoo 3 2000 video card. My 1.3 GHz machine did not seem to perform nearly as well on some applications, even though it had a 64 MB GEforce video card. Truthfully, on everyday applications like WordPerfect or Internet Explorer, I never noticed much difference at all. So the idea of buying a brand new iBook at 700 MHz, about half the speed of my AMD machine, didn't bother me at all. The iBook performs well. CPU speed is not an issue.

Battery Life — From full charge, using the machine constantly for writing, email and Web browsing, I get between 4.5 and 5 hours out of the battery, which is very impressive in my opinion. That means I can generally work through a whole evening or an afternoon without worrying about plugging the machine in. This is an extremely liberating experience for a long-time desktop PC user. To be able to compute anywhere! The longer battery life is possible because the iBook steps back its processor to 400 MHz speed while on battery only. Don't worry, you can have it work at top speed all the time if you want, but if long battery life between charges is important to you, let the iBook decide automatically how it will behave.

Small screen — Yes, it's smaller than a desktop monitor, but it has never been an issue for me. I did look at the iBook with the larger screen (14.1) inch, but decided against it, not because of the cost (it was only a couple of hundred dollars difference), but because the darned thing felt flimsy! The smaller iBook with the 12.1 inch screen felt rock steady. No bendiness. It just felt... good. Solid. And the 1024-768 resolution is ample for my needs. I have used an older iBook at work with a resolution of 800-600, and this is far superior.

Windows compatibility — This is where the iBook had a few problems for me. For all the hype of "It just works" and "Start working out of the box" there was an inordinate amount of tweaking to do to get the iBook to play nicely with my home PC network. Oh, Jaguar detected the other Windows shares without a problem; swapping files was not the issue. The problem was printers. My home network shared an older NEC Silentwriter2 290 Postscript printer hooked up via parallel port. The first problem arose because the iBook could not detect the printer shares at all on the Windows network. After I solved that problem working in terminal to adjust the Samba configuration, I learned that I could not print to the Silentwriter at all because it is a Postscript Level I printer. Jaguar can print only to Postscript Level II and III compatible printers. After much research, I learned about some Unix applications that could help (Gimp-Print and Ghostscript), and after installing them managed to share the printer without a problem. If I had not had a lot of experience with Linux and Unix, however, I would not have attempted this and would have ended up buying a USB printer to hook up directly to the iBook.

Add-ons. I guess I must have been feeling particularly flush the day I bought my iBook, because I bumped the RAM up to 384 MB, purchased the 3-year AppleCare protection plan, as well as an AirPort Base Station and Airport Card. It's been close to a month since I purchased my iBook, and I have not regretted the purchase even once. I have not yet used the AppleCare plan, and hope never to have to. The Airport and wireless networking, on the other hand, are now such an integral part of the way I compute that I could never go back to hard-wired computing! The Airport, by the way, integrated seamlessly with the Windows network.

Three short postscripts.

I have two Linux systems in the house acting as servers — one as a router/firewall for the Lan, the other as a file server. I ended up switching the Silentwriter to the Linux server and it is shared without problem by all systems in the house; I put an Epson C60 on the Windows box for the kids to do their colour printing. Both machines work well over the wireless network for the iBook, and both work well for the Windows machines.

For those new to OS X, I'm sorry to say that the documentation that comes with the iBook is virtually useless. I ended up purchasing OS X Jaguar — The Missing Manual, which at $30 was a good investment. I'd recommend it highly to anybody new to Mac or to OS X. For Linux/Unix users, the terminal and shell will prove familiar territory, but the GUI can be a challenge if you're not accustomed to it. I don't blame long-time Mac users for being uncertain about switching to OS X.

Lastly, something of interest to those who are weighing whether to purchase from Apple directly, or from an authorized reseller. Exactly four days after I purchased my 700 MHz iBook, Apple released the next generation, 800 MHz iBook. These look the same, but have a little more juice on both the CPU and video areas. What really shocked me, however, was that the price of the old iBook dropped by about $300 Canadian across the board! I visited the Apple site and learned that Apple had a price protection policy in effect for 10 days after an order is placed. I wasn't sure that the reseller would honor the policy. I phoned them, they checked into it, and called back a short while later to inform me that they'd refund the difference. I told them I'd rather have a copy of Microsoft Office v. X instead, and they agreed, which was fine with both of us, I'm sure. All in all, I was very impressed with the service I received from the reseller. The salesman demonstrated good knowledge of the product and, even better, I got to play on the iBooks before deciding which one I wanted.