Tech: 12" Apple Powerbook G4 impressions (A Prelude to the Mini 9)

I'm hopefully going to receive my new Inspiron Mini 9 netbook from Dell this week, so I thought it might be instructive to look at a precursor to the current subnotebook fad - the 12" Powerbook G4 laptop. Apple doesn't sell this model anymore, although it's readily available on eBay (the last hardware revision was in 2005, and it was discontinued in 2006). I managed to use one for a few hours, so it'll give me a good point of reference when the Mini 9 finally gets here.

It's a shame that Apple doesn't sell this type of notebook anymore, since this is a very usable size (actually, Steve Jobs might announce something like this at an Apple event about a week from now). The 12" XGA display looks great, and the screen real estate is large enough to get some real work done. The keyboard is basically full-size, with a standard layout and decent feedback from keystrokes. The trackpad works well; I do wish there were two mouse buttons (hey, I'm a PC user at heart). My particular example was kitted with OS X, and loading applications was fairly speedy for the most part.

The 12" Powerbook G4 laptop is also a sterling example of one thing Apple has had for many, many years now: best-in-class product design. The aluminum case, the distinctly modern curved corners, the nifty internal slot-loading disc drive - there's a level of care here that makes lesser laptops seem like toys or knockoffs. The aluminum case can get dented, however, and Apple had to recall some of these for battery problems.

The largest problem the G4 has, in my view, is the weight - the G4 tips the scales at nearly 5 pounds. This is certainly lower than most mainstream laptops but 1 or 2 pounds heavier than most ultraportables, as most 12" laptops omit the disc drive. The Inspiron 9, by contrast, weighs half as much as the G4 and occupies about 30 percent less volume. It's going to be interesting to see whether the weight and size advantages of the Dell outweigh the keyboard and display tradeoffs.