I had to run a few errands in SoHo this morning and made a stop at the Apple Store. They had a single 12″ PowerBook on display and it was amazing!
The size has been bothering me until now. I was not sure that I would like the screen size / resolution, but now that I have seen it I can say with all honesty that I would not miss having 3 more inches of real estate if I had to get the smaller book. I still want to see the 17″ when it comes in, and would still like to check out the pending revision to the 15″ the rumor sites have already been whispering about.
The 12 inch book, has some very nice design elements to it. The hinge for the screen is terrific and seems more like the iBook than the TiBook. All the ports are on the left side with the slot drive taking up about 2/3 of the right edge. I would take a day or two to adjust to some new hand positions with the keyboard after 2 years with my current machine since everything is repositioned on the smaller platform.
Interestingly the machine had no internet connection since they are actually waiting on the Airport Extreme card and base stations to come in. In a quick browse I would say that apps started much faster than on my TiBook 500 and overall the general performance was nice. Apple did not ship the machine with Safari and defaulted to IE which was also a bit strange. Otherwise, I can’t think of anything but wow. The size, weight and general feel of the machine were all excellent. My prediction is that Apple is not going to be able to keep up with the demand for these. The bang for the buck is the best they have offered. Loaded for less than $2000 + Airport Extreme which is a BTO option…