***Apple ibook G4 screen***

the screen is great and amazing....
DVD movie? quite OK, but the sound of the drive itself quite annoying though... sound like a tornado....
yeah widescreen is a minus point

Lol.

Anyways, I just popped by our Microcomputer store, today, and I was looking at their 15.2" Powerbook and the 14" iBook. Personally, I thought the screens... "sucked". Ok, maybe they aren't THAT bad, but the viewing angles on the 14" iBook (the old version) were noticeably small, and it wasn't all that bright, and it wasn't all that sharp, either (running @ 1024x768). It's a similar story for the Powerbook, but I can't remember how the viewing angles were on that machine. It could have been that this iBook kind of sucked, though, but I also noticed that the trackpad wasn't working/tracking so well for me (it was an annoyance). On a related note: do you have to install 3rd party software to get the feature where you can tap on corners to activate various Exposé features? ANOTHER THING: for some reason, on that iBook, hitting F12 (which doubles as the eject button, strangely), wouldn't get the Dashboard to load up (and it WAS running Mac OS X 10.4.2). F9-F11 would work, but F12 wouldn't. It did try and activate the eject feature one time, though, but I wasn't holding down alt/function. Oh, and the touchpad button was kind of loose (I found) and loud and clicky. Maybe it's wear on the display model, but that's alarming, too, because I thought iBooks were supposed to be built to be very durable?

Finally, on a side note: what can you click on the OS X GUI to drop down a list of all active applications? Because I was clicking the Apple menu and other stuff, and I couldn't find a list of running apps for the life of me :P

Anyways, in summary: I'm more determined than ever to bring my friend to an Apple store when she finally gets back and try out a 12" iBook to see how she likes it. Btw, is the 12" iBook supposed to have even WORSE viewing angles and screen quality than the 14" iBook?

the default setting for f12 on my ibook is expose, not dashboard. No you dont need to install extra software to get the "hot corners" (if thats what they're called).

yeah the viewing angles arent too good on the ibooks. However I must say I prefer it like this as someone sitting next to me has a hard time reading my screen!

what i've done is copied all my presentations over from my old lappy (tosh tecra a2) and used a projector at work to share my screen with people.

the trackpad button is clunky aswell, but that's not something i'm really bothered about.

for the list of running apps, they all appear in the dock, whether the shortcuts were originally on there or not, plus all the icons with a triangle underneath identify which apps are open.

i find the screen fine to be honest, to me the blacks are black and the whites are white, or maybe i have dodgy eyes there's no doubt that there are better screens out there, but they aren't ibooks are they?

But on the Powerbook that was on display, F12 brought up Dashboard. Exposé was only bound to keys F9-F11 in Mac OS X Panther.



But I'm assuming that for you, it's not overly load like it was on that display unit, and that it smoothly tracked along with your finger's movements, right? Cause I think that display unit had issues (which also concerns me, cause it shows succeptability to wear and tear).

Oh... lol, that makes sense But what if you have a whole lot of apps installed? Do they suddenly show up on the dock once you're running (say, because you took them off the dock because there wasn't enough room)?

Das good. I hope I was just looking at an iBook that was in very bad condition.

Yep, they appear on the far right before the separator on the dock. When you close them, they fade back off.

If you want to track the activities of them, go to applications: utilities: activity monitor

Also, for viewing angles... I have to turn my powerbook almost completely vertical with the screen pushed completely back before I start to see that weird hard black difference you see in lcds.

Yeah, I noticed them. I think I might have just thought that they go there only when you minimize them

Yeah, but you see, I couldn't find any generic "Applications" icon on the Dock, and I couldn't find it in the Apple in the top left, either.

Ok. But let me just say that the display iBook LCD was pretty bad, because I noticed that I was having difficulty viewing the screen. Maybe you get used to it, though, and I was trying to study the screen quality.

tech_girl,
i'm beginning to think a research trip to your local apple retail might be in order.

If you're willing to wait until you get to your university (watch out for that Sept 24th mail-in-rebate deadline, though), your university will hopefully have a microcomputing store that doubles as an authorized Apple reseller.

http://www.apple.com/ca/retail/yorkd.../20050731.html

looks like u guys have one official store for the whole country. yikes

No, COME ON, lol. Canada is not what you Americans think it is. We have more than one Apple reseller, lol. Ok, hmm, http://www.apple.com/ca/retail seems to redirect you to that york page. Hmm... Maybe that's the ONE official Apple store for Canada.

Lol, anyways, there are tons of resellers across Canada. Go here:
http://wheretobuy.apple.com/ca_locator/
And type in "Nova Scotia" and then click on HIGHER EDUCATION. That'll give you a list of a few good hits for university students. You can click on HOME later to see other resellers, like The Source by Circuit City.

my next post was going to have your 2nd link. i had found that link while looking around. i'd make sure to call and see what those resellers have for display models. here in the US we have places like bestbuy, which recently began selling the Mini and more recently the notebooks as well. the last i was there, they had the mini on display while the notebooks were only available online for purchase.

btw, how do u guys manage getting on the internet w/o electricity? jk

That's not even funny. We of course run on diesel generators 24/7. Actually, the retired hippies supplement that with solar power stored to batteries.

Anyways, quite a few of those Apple resellers are probably dedicated Apple resellers, or at least have a Mac section. Unless they're a generic consumer electronics store, like The Source by Circuit City (formerly Radio Shack here in Canada), then you've probably got a good shot at seeing some iBooks and Powerbooks on display (e.g. my microcomputing store here @ SFU, which had a 14" iBook and a 15.2" Powerbook on display. Along with a SWEET Apple Cinema display (probably like 24") running 2048xsomething widescreen on a dual G5 with... 2GB of RAM? 4GB of RAM? Can't remember. Anyways, there were a bunch of Mac related displays, too, along with iPod displays).

well no harm in checking, give them a call anyways.

Just my little update: I think my microcomputing store switched out the 14" iBook display model (still pre-refresh, though, cause it's got a 1.33GHz G4 processor); at least I think they did, because the screen on this one seems better and the touchpad button clicks fine (although it's still noticeably more conspicuous than the Powerbook's touchpad button which clicks firmly but very quietly). The touchpad seemed to track pretty well, too.

And Tech_Girl, did you manage to find some good iBook display units from a campus Apple reseller? (see below if not)