Hands-On Report--Tripping with the New iBook (Wrap Up)

Our principal traveling companion on business trips that include long airplane flights for the past 2.5 years has been a PowerBook 2400c. Not many of these diminutive 4.4-pound, PowerPC-fired PowerBooks were sold in the USA despite their perfect size and power for road warriors. It was discontinued after a year in production. Fortunately, a lot were sold in Japan. The 2400c kept pace in CPU speed with its newer and larger PowerBook G3 brethren because Apple (actually IBM Japan) made the 2400c's CPU upgradable and several companies made G3 upgrades for it. In addition, MCE provided a service to enable FireWire, USB and fast ethernet. However, it fell behind in graphics power, batteries became scarce and expensive and its RAM limited out at 112 MB. We were beginning to think that Apple would never make a replacement until the new iBook was recently released. We took one on our West Coast trip this week and put it through its paces running Mac OS X for the most part.

Our observations on the new iBook during travel out to the West Coast were posted on Tuesday. We noted how well it fit into our PowerBook 2000's carry case along with a 3-pound InFocus LP130 digital projector and AirPort Base Station. We also noted its fit on our airline tray in coach plus its battery life and modem performance in our first hotel.

How did it work with Mac OS X and the InFocus projector for our presentations? Not very well. We had two problems but we believe that neither are the fault of the iBook.

First, we tried everything that we could think of, including reading the InFocus projector's manual, to get it to accept the iBooks 1024x768 resolution video output without having to boot the iBook with the projector already connected and on. The InFocus projector has the same problem with our PowerBook 2000 (Pismo). Maybe it is a problem with the projector. However, once booted into Mac OS X with the projector on, the iBook could be disconnected and reconnected with no problem most of the time. Not so with our Pismo. We look forward to trying this with our TiBook when it arrives. When we had plenty of time to set up and weren't trading the projector connection with others, the long Mac OS X boot up requirement was just an annoyance. Since Mac OS X takes so long to boot, including its Classic mode (Mac OS 9.1) as PowerPoint is not yet carbonized, we mostly booted into a stripped Mac OS 9.1 which takes less than a minute.

Second, we got a kernel panic once during practice with Mac OS X when we plugged in the USB connector for the remote controller. Classic mode hangs during boot up if the remote's USB connector is plugged into the iBook so we are forced to plug it in after booting finishes or not use the remote. This made us very leery of using Mac OS X. We noted that there is a firmware update for the projector on InFocus' web site but a PC running Windows is required to install it---grrrrr. Except for the need of a PC to update its firmware, the InFocus LP130 digital projector is marvelous. We will post a complete review on it soon.

Our second hotel had high speed internet service, $9.95 for 24 hours (noon to noon) usage. The internet service was provided by STNS and was completely plug and play with either Mac OS 9.1 or Mac OS X. TCP/IP just had to be set to Using DHCP server. Ethernet, USB (for Windows machines) and modem cables were available in a plastic bag in the room--very thoughtful. We did not even have to reset the smtp server domain name for each email account. The AirPort Base Station worked fine as a bridge but we really didn't need it since the internet connection was on the desk.

The AirPort Base Station was a super convenience in dial up mode at our first hotel. It freed the iBook for use out on the balcony or on the desk across the room from the phone jack. At first we found that we could not disconnect using Mac OS X. Clicking the "Disconnect" button in the Internet Connect application caused the AirPort Base Station to go through the disconnection process but Mac OS X just immediately redialed. We solved this issue by manually disconnecting the AirPort Base Station from the phone jack but later we found that while configuring AirPort for dial up mode (modem) mode we had inadvertently checked the box to "Automatically dial".

On the way back we got an aisle seat on a Boeing 777. This terrific airplane, the world's best in our opinion, has room to spare in coach (on United anyway) to open the iBook on the meal tray even with the seat in front fully reclined. Unlike our trip out on a Boeing 757 (the US's worst airplane in terms of coach space), the lady seated in front of us on the way back kept her seat back up. She kindly fully reclined it at our request to see how well the iBook fit under that circumstance. Our Pismo would not have fit but a TiBook might as there was still a little over an inch to spare between the top of the iBook's screen and the tray notch in the seat back.

Battery life on the way back was similar to on the way out. We had the iBook in sleep mode for about 2 hours before opening it on the plane. Then we worked on the iBook for 3.5 hours. There was still about a half hour left when we put it to sleep for landing according to Mac OS X's Battery Monitor application. It slept another 2 hours before reopening it at home and the Battery Monitor read 0:43.

The new iBook is a very impressive traveling companion. Functionally, it does everything extremely well and looks fabulous too. Mated with and AirPort Base Station and small digital projector like the new InFocus LH130, it is an exceptional road warrior's computer. The new iBook out shines our beloved 2400c in every way except one--exclusivity--and that will surely make Apple a bunch of money.