The introduction of the MacBook Air (and the buzz over its size) got me thinking about the 12″ PowerBook I used to use. So, earlier today I dug it out of the office storage cabinet, did a clean install of Leopard and added a few “essential” applications (Nisus Writer Pro, Camino, MarsEdit, CSSEdit, BBEdit, iWork ’08, Yojimbo, VLC and the DevonAgent/DevonThink combination).
Presto! A great little computer I can now carry around in my messenger bag for Latte-level computing (you know, the sort you see taking place at your neighborhood coffee shop) without feeling like I have a couple of bricks in there.
Syncing via .mac greatly simplifies the whole “keeping a second (or third) computer current” problem. If you don’t have a .mac account (or perhaps even if you do) you can also use a service like JungleDisk to help move files between machines.
The 12″ PowerBook weighs a pound more than the MacBook Air and it is definitely slower (1.33GHz PowerPC vs. 1.6GHz Core 2 Duo) but there are a few compensating features as well: smaller footprint (MacBook Air is 2 inches wider), Firewire 400 port, real keyboard, ethernet jack, 5400 rpm drive and more.
And no, it’s not all great. This notebook is sort of beat up and old (built 2004) and according to one utility I ran, the S.M.A.R.T. status of the internal drive is “failing.” Typing “diskutil info disk0 | grep SMART” returned “SMART Status: Verified” so I’m not quite sure which to trust. I guess the next few weeks will clear that up.
If I find that I am still carrying this thing around in a couple of weeks, I’ll use an iFixit takeapart guide and replace the internal drive with a 7200 rpm Seagate Momentus (today the 100GB Momentus with a 5 year warranty costs roughly the same price as a replacement battery).