My PowerBook
G4/17" finally arrived today! I was expecting it to arrive in another
couple of weeks, mostly because Apple increased the estimated ship date
and I thought it would take a week to actually get to me. But it was
shipped the day after they changed the ship date and it was sent from
Sacramento so it only took a day to get to me.
It's a thing of beauty. It's huge, and heavy! Amazingly fast compared
to my old PowerBook G4 — partly from the faster processor and bus
system, partly from the faster hard drive, partly from the faster
memory. I also bought a new backpack to hold the sucker. Everything is
a little more cramped but for the most part I'm carrying the same stuff
as before.
Ok, so when I thought I had to wait another couple of weeks I panicked.
I thought cancelling my order but apparently you can't cancel
build-to-order items. And with my PowerBook G3 hard crashing every day
it was pretty bleak. So I bought a 40 GB iPod (along with an iTrip so
my sister can listen to music in the car). Paid for next day shipping
too and then the next day right after the iPod arrives I find out that
my PowerBook has shipped. Doh!
Still, the iPod is also very cool. I copied my hard drive to it and
booted off of it just fine. The controls take a little getting used to.
Their not buttons, you merely touch them to activate. And I couldn't
figure out the scroll wheel for a few minutes — the manual doesn't
really convey the fact that all you have to do is slide your finger in
a circle around the central button. The iPod is quiet (you can barely
detect the hard drive spinning up if you listen for it) and the menus
are responsive. The LCD display is a bit too small since I tended to
use big strings for my playlist names.
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The iTrip is a
bit disappointing. Clever though. The iPod doesn't support the iTrip so
to configure it (you can only set the output FM band and turn the LED
on or off) you play a special iTrip song. The song audio is a command
to the iTrip. Otherwise the iTrip turns on by itself when it detects
sound output and turns off after a minute of silence. And it fits
nicely on top of my iPod.
The bad thing is that it doesn't quite work. Or at least I haven't
gotten it to work well. Now, I've listened to after-market CD systems
that people install in their cars. You know, where the CD system is in
the trunk with a bunch of CDs and it delivers the sound to a specific
FM station that your car radio is tuned to. Works very well and you
can't tell it's over-the -air.
The iTrip does not put out that much power. It's very easy to drown it
out from even a weak radio station or just static. The other problem is
that in the San Francisco Bay Area just about every FM channel is
already in use. I have to tinker around with it some more but right now
it looks like a suboptimal solution at best. I'll probably have to try
a casette adapter.
I also signed up for cable television, as if I haven't spent enough
money in the last few weeks. It was a Comcast special for extended
basic for $20 a month for three months. Actually I was really thinking
of getting cable at least for the NBA playoffs. Last year I watched the
games at my sister's place and after a couple of weeks she was getting
pretty annoyed. I'll probably switch to basic cable once the NBA
playoffs are no longer on TNT, or once the Kings are out of the
playoffs.
And I just cancelled my SBC DSL. But more on that later.
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