Please review your pb for me

Question

Hi
I have an emac which I use for more intence work, but like a laptop for basic school work. I have an ibook g3 600 right now that is falling apart, so I need a new laptop. I am looking at both the pismo and tibook. Could you please answer some questions for me?
What would really help me is if you could write a blurb on the pros/cons of your laptop. Thanks a lot for all your help!
Patrick

Answer 1

The Pismo is a flexible note book with many features. Airport and firewire were introduced into the Powerbook line with the Pismo, and enables very easy connectivity to WiFi base stations and external hard drives and similar.
It is also the only g3 powerbook that supports Open GL (under os X that is), thanks to its Rage 128 mobility graphics card, on a 2x AGP bus. (Compared to previous models' PCI based Rage pro chip, that did not support open gl under OS X, making all graphics terribly slow).
So we've got versatile connectivity (which of course includes USB, S-video, VGA, 100 Mb ethernet, audio and modem available on earlier powerbooks as well).
That's compared to earlier machines.
But many say it has advantages on later models as well. For instance, not until the 17 inch powerbook were there any portable with dual fire wire. But that's not as important as the fact that the Pismo has dual expansion bays, for two batteries. Also, Titanium powerbooks are known to be fragile, and its display hinges can break easily. This never happened to the Pismo.
Then the fan of the Pismo virtually never comes on. It's a cool and quiet computer.
It's drawbacks are, of course, that it lacks the raw power of new powerbooks and iBooks. Of course, you can't expect a five year old machine to compare to the latest monster machines. If you need computing power for video editing, handling large photos or stuff like that, you'll need the power of a 1 GHz + G4.
But as this will be a basic school computer (like writing essays, taking notes, web and email) the Pismo will do fine.
Summary:
Pros:
• Great connectivity! WLAN!!
• End of the line G3 note book.
• Durable case, it's NOT fragile
• Ability to use two batteries, for long school days
• Cool and quiet, no noise in the class room.
• you can upgrade it; close to as much as you feel like
Cons:
• slow compared to new computers (naturally)
• original batteries are worn out by now, so you might have to replace it the first thing you do
That's it. If you don't have the money for a new iBook G4, (which would be a more capable computer, but also a more expensive one), get the pismo, rather than a contemporary iBook or an early Ti-book.