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Thursday , February 20th 2003 11:16 CDT

More on 12" "Tingling" Sensation

Here are a few more reader responses regarding the 12" PowerBook possibly conducting electricity through its metal case giving users a "tingling" sensation when in contact with the machine when plugged into AC power:

I had a chance today to do some setup on a 12" PB for my boss. I cannot feel any difference between when it is connected to AC and when it is on battery alone. No sense of "tingling" or anything else that would suggest electrical current flowing though the case.

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I've had a 12" PB for a couple of weeks now. I can discern no electrical current or tingling sensation regardless of whether or not it is plugged in or not. I have felt this current before on a TiBook, but never on this machine.

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I noticed that little tingle on my 12" too. I thought it was just the texture at first. If it's unplugged and running on the battery, the tingle goes away. It also goes away if i use the extension cord. Basically, I only notice it when i use the plugs in the adapter itself and I run my finger across the surface.

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Hey guys. Love my 12" Powerbook. I got it from The Grove in LA but I'm in Guatemala. What I notice is that if plug it in and put my barefeet on a tile floor I get the the tingling. HOWEVER, if I change to the three prong connector (which my iBook doesn't have) there is no tingling....obviously you need to ground this baby!

Wednesday , February 19th 2003 13:19 CDT

12" PowerBook "Tingling Electrical Sensation" Responses

Only a couple readers commented on our request for reports on whether the 12" PowerBook shares the "tingling electrical sensation" problem when plugged into AC power that the early generation PowerBook G4s did:

On my 15" Powerbook (original 400mhz) I could feel this tingling very slightly from the electricity running through it. It wasn't horrible.

I cannot duplicate this problem on my 12" Powerbook.

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Thought id stick in my bit The first thing I noticed about my power book was the strange Almost alive feeling of the palm rest material thanks for letting Me know what it actually is

12" PowerBook Sound Responses

It's clear that a lot of readers have 12" PowerBooks, so they just didn't notice or don't have the electrical current problem, because more than a few wrote in with their estimation of the sound quality of the 12" PowerBook. Remember, the speakers are on the back of the lower half of the machine and actually fire sound into the display, "bouncing" it back to the user. Also, there's a speaker under the keyboard which is supposed to add midrange sound. So here's the readers opinion of the, as one reader called it, "foot long PowerBook:"

I just saw the thing on pbzone.com about the 12" PowerBook spreakers. I got mine last week, and after the (Late 2001) iBook I had before the speakers are of good quality, if a little Quiet. Not sure if I buy the whole "Sound waves bouncing off the display" theorey- I just think thats the only place they could fit them! They work fine, as I say but just when Im in iTunes or whatever and choose to play music, before they play they make a bit of a pop noise, like they're getting ready or something. That never happened on the iBook. But then again, I never bothered to play music on the iBook with the speakers, as they were completely useless. I don't really notice the 3rd 'Mid Range booster' speaker under the keyboard, but I suppose if it wasnt there I would notice. The speakers are good but nothing to wow on about, but I suppose for a laptop of this size they are impressive

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The 12" Powerbook's sound is the most unique of any mac I've come across not only because of its 3 speaker system but also because of its behavior when I change the volume. Rather than a directly proportional change in volume as I push the volume up key, it seems to increase exponentially. So at low volume settings, pushing the volume up key will yield very little increase in sound, but at high volume settings, pushing the volume up key causes a large increase in volume. I guess this allows for finer adjustments in the low volume range where they're most needed.

Quality of sound and bass is good. Better than my 15" Powerbook's. In a quiet environment it's really impressive. But in a noisy room, it's nothing remarkable.

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I got mine this morning. It has great sound quality I was impressed, but if its volume your interested in you will be very disappointed.

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I have a foot long Powerbook and have to say that the audio is at least as good as I've heard on any laptop I've ever heard. I certainly wouldn't call it Hi Fi, but as a professional in the audio post production industry, it's certainly impressive for it's size and quite functional. I do, however wish that I could get just a little more gain out of the system. But overall, it could be a lot worse.

Incidentally, I have no tingling as others have reported.

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When I was in the store buying my PB the salesman mentioned the exceptionally good sound coming out of the unique design. At the time they sounded kind of tinny and I wasn't impressed; however, since then I have been pleasantly surprised with sound from DVDs. The speakers are good enough so that voices sound natural without headphones on. Music soundy tinny. Movies sound fine to my untrained ears.

One issue I am unsatisfied with is the DVD playback. When playing full-screen the dropped frames are noticeable. I have to play the movie in a smaller window to get smooth playback. I am using 10.2.3 because I'm overseas and can't get the update-- no pipe.

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What can I say - ok, nothing to write home about. Certainly better than my late ibook 366SE, but nowhere near as rich and full as what comes out of an old Wallstreet. You kind of feel it bouncing off the open screen, so it feels slightly indirect, and thus less three dimensional than it would be from direct speakers, sort of flattened, you could say.

Tuesday, February 18th 2003 00:01 CDT

Good News: Crumpler's Beer-for-Bags Deal Available in NYC

Dave from Crumpler wrote in to let us know we've not told the whole story in informing our reading public that their Beer-for-Bags deal is only available in Australia. It's also available in New York City at their store in the Big Apple:

Just wanted to let u know that our Bier For Bags promo is available in the US from our store in NYC at 45 Spring St. T: 212 334-9391 info@crumplernyc.com.

In your recent article on the sale you mentioned it was only available in Australia.

Hope to see you there.

More details about their NYC store are available at its website.

Pismo/10.2.4/DVD Playback Responses

There were a lot of responses to our call for confirmation of any problems with 10.2.4 and DVD playback. About 30 in all, by our count. They all said DVD playback was fine on the Pismo after the 10.2.4 upgrade, except for two. Those two, and a few interesting notes from other readers are below:

I work from an authorized service provider and currently have an open case number regarding the problem with 10.2.4 and DVD on the Pismo. The person at Apple I spoke with had me check my version of the firmware and read off the model of the DVD drive. They were going to try to duplicate the problem in the lab. If anyone else is having the same problem I can email Apple as part of my case. I would need the following information:

Serial Number
Firmware Version, found as Boot ROM Info in System Profiler
System Info (RAM, HD, Processor)
odel Number of DVD Drive, not the Mxxx number but the number found in parenthesis after.

[Please send this information to info@pbzone.com if you have this problem. We'll forward it to the reader that sent this in so his email address isn't published. Please put Pismo DVD Problem in the subject line.-Ed]

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I have the same problem. When I insert a DVD I get the message: DVD PLAYER ENCOUNTERED A SERIOUS ERROR. The current machine or system configuration is not supported [-70013]. I don't have my system backed-up and don't have the time to reinstall so I hope Apple fixes this bug soon.

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Interestingly, I mistakenly swapped in my flakey LG DVD module for the testing! I switched to the Matshita DVD module and it worked fine too. I wonder if the LG is coming back to life somehow.

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One DVD I tried, "Journey into Amazing Caves" had odd problems popping back and forth between "chunky" resizing and bilinear HW resizing. However, this problem was present on 2 other Macs as well... a new 1Ghz PB and an old 450Mhz G4 tower.

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I just tried a DVD (Ice Age) on my Pismo running 10.2.4 after reading the article on your site. It worked fine for me. I will note that I had much bigger problems than lack of DVD playback when I first upgraded to 10.2.4 (from 10.2.3) using Software Update. I had severe glitching in the video display, areas of windows not being painted properly by web browsers, etc. In an attempt to solve that, I downloaded and installed the "10.2.4 Combo Update" from Apple. <http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107363>

The combo update worked to fix the video glitching problem I saw. I am also able to play DVDs fine. I'm not sure whether or not I had DVD problems after the initial update, but I'm not seeing any unusual or broken behavior after the Combo update.

• By and large, 10.2.4 doesn't hurt DVD playback on Pismo machines.
• The combo update, which combines all the updates to the OS since 10.2 itself was released, fixes a lot of problems that might crop up after updates to 10.2.4 via Software Update.
• And lastly, email us with the information required above to help Apple attempt to duplicate the problem.

12" Speaker Quality?

Reader Nathan asks:

I haven't heard anyone comment about the sound quality of the 12-inch PowerBook's rather unique 3-speaker design. Have you received any comments on this?

PowerBook Electrical Current Problems: Again on the 12" Aluminum PB?

Speaking of the 12" PowerBook, reader Philip writes:

Apart from minor gripes about my new pbg4 12" (uneven closure and seemingly worn-out, wobbly clicker) today I noticed something slightly more unsettling: when it's attached to the charger, the casing has a small electrical charge running through it.

You feel it when you run your finger along the metal lightly, the sort of tingling you'd get from batteries. It's stronger to the left of the trackpad and near the on/off button. Unplug the charger and the tingling is gone. Any other reports of this?

Is the issue back on the 12" model? We'll let people with 12" machines write in and we'll post a response later this week.

Monday, February 17th 2003 08:26 CDT

10.2.4 on PowerBooks

A few readers wrote in with 10.2.4 experiences after installng the operating system update released Friday:

I installed 10.2.4 last night and itıs been up and running fine all day that is until I tried to watch a DVD now itıs telling me that there is a serious drive error and is not loading any DVDıs. Luckily I am fully backed up so I will downgrade back to 10.2.3 until apple fixes this just though the other Pismo owners might like to know. BTW I am using a PB 400/32 gb/320mb with the matshita drive and the update was carried out through software update!

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Like others I can now play QT movies with reasonable screen areas without much skipping. However I note that OpenGL Info shows OpenGL still using software rendering (it was hardware rendered under 9.2) as can be seen in the fade-between pictures in screen-effects. Interestingly this was smooth under 10.0.something (5?) suggesting Apple had it enabled back then but disabled it possibly due to stability. 10.2.4 does not restore HW OpenGL. Sadly it hasn't helped VLC's DVD client either. This is down I think to the OS X rendering scheme - Quciktime, Quickdraw and OpenGL all have their own rendering routes and optimizing one doesn't necessarily optimize them all.

Still waiting for my DVD player to work again.

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oh yeah. definite, observable speed improvements for accelerated Quartz. windows scroll smoothly, drag smoothly, QT plays without a single hiccup. impressive.

no OpenGL support yet, though. the easiest way to test it is with the good old gallery screen effects - forest, cosmos and the like. if you've got OpenGL acceleration, the transitions are a subtle pan and fade, otherwise, it's just a slideshow. And, as an addendum, Keynote still won't work with Lombards.
>

It's still officially unsupported on Rage Pro cards. Oh well...

PowerBook 17" Shipping Roundup: Demo Units Show up at California Apple Stores, but There's Little Hope for 17" PowerBooks for Another Month or More

Yesterday, MacNN reported that the Palo Alto Apple Store had a 17" display unit available for customers to gander at. Reader Ronald sent in a report that confirms that at least one other store has a 17" demo unit:

I had occasion to visit the Apple Stores at South Coast Plaza and Fashion Island near Newport Beach this weekend. These two stores are incredibly only about 10 minutes drive from each other in Southern California. Employees at both stores told me that they are still working with an "end of this month" (February) shipping estimate from Apple for the 17" Powerbooks.

Just as a side note, the South Coast Plaza store just got their first 17" machine this weekend for a demo. I was able to get a peek a it before it went on display. I can't wait for mine to be delivered.

I know it is still hard to tell how soon the PB17s are coming in. A week ago I went to the St. Louis Apple Store and they said they'll have a demo in about 2 weeks (I've seen this also stated by other people). I ordered my PB17 from MacMall and they told me just three days ago that they are getting a shipment of 5000 PB17s on Feb 28. When asked on the source on the date, they said Apple.

Ordered from Apple online 1/7/03 @ 12:37pm PST. I checked their site this morning (2/14/03). They continue to list "Est. ship date of 3/21/03". Frustrating lesson in patience....

• Apple Store buyers, especially early buyers, are quoted around 3/20 as their ship date. ]
• We have received at least two emails from readers who were told by Apple Retail Store employees that they'd be getting stock at the end of February. We believe this to be doubtful, at best.
• Resellers like MacMall, et al. are quoting dates between February 28th and April 20th.

Readers Happy With 12" PowerBook Bag from Willow

Reader Steve in Los Angeles wrote in with a very positive experience with the guys at Willow Design:

I just had to write you. I just received the McLeese 12" PB Slipcase for my new 12" Albook and these guys deserve a positive note. The case fits my new PB like a glove and has extra room for the basic necessities (I got the 12" to travel light - right?).

But most of all, the dudes at Willow were attentive and followed my order to the end. In fact, I ordered the 12" iBook bag at first, thinking that that would fit well, and within minutes of my order I had an email from Willow informing me that the 12" PB version would be ready in a day or so. They even emailed me after the projected arrival date to see how I liked it (even though it hadn't arrived yet - a shipping error - not their fault). I've got it now though and love it. Thanks for the referral, PBZone.