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PBG4-1GHz – Great Scrolling Blitman


Well, I finally got my PowerBook G4 – 1GHz/1GB RAM/SD/60GB and one thing I really noticed under Mac OS X 10.2.2 is the speed of scrolling in just about every program I use, especially in Internet Exploiter! I have a PowerBook G4 – 500MHz and there is a BIG jump in performance. It seem even faster than the PC I’m forced to use at work. Hardware accelerated video is a very good thing.

I have also noticed a interesting addition to the keyboard. There is a new legend on the F7 key – it looks like two overlaping rectangles and it turns mirroring on and off with a simple keystroke. This machine can mirror at 800×600, 896×600, 1024×768, 1152×768, AND 1280×854. The 1280×854 mode could only do 60Hz on my external monitor so beware of eyestrain. (Note: The mirroring FKey is also available on the 667 & 800MHz DVI PBs – Ed).

The SuperDrive is a Matshita DVD-R UJ-815 and works great. I would have liked a 2x DVD-R drive, but what am I complaining about since I can’t even find 2x DVD-R media in my area yet, I guess I’ll just have to suffer. After having a PBG4/500 I thought there might have been a problem when I inserted a DVD and the drive when THUNK! However, the drive is just like the one a PBG4/867 in this respect. I am going to create a DVD using iDVD and see how many consumer player I can find that will play it (look out Circuit City here I come).

I stopped by a Best Buy store this evening and tried the machine on LCD monitors with DVI connectors (there were three) – WOW! (now I need to justify the purchase of a nice 19″ LCD monitor to work with this machine.

By Jason O'Grady

Founded the PowerPage in 1995.