Titanium PowerBook Report Part 3

Part III: Using the Titanium PowerBook

Powering On
Turning on the TiBook is a joy: you press the silver power button to the upper right of the keyboard and immediately hear the familiar Mac startup bong. (Why does that sound still give me chills of wonder and excitement?)

When the screen backlight kicks in you're in heaven: suddenly the display looks even bigger.

Booting the first time took me straight into Apple's registration and configuration program, which was annoying, since my plan was to reformat and partition the hard drive (which would erase all those settings). I just wanted to play with TiBook a little and do some tests before reformatting. A bit Draconian of Apple to force you to register like that.

(I suppose you can force quit from Apple's program, though I've never actually tried that. Instead I just registered a second time after I'd restored the original system from the included CD.)

The cool thing was that since I had my old Wallstreet connected to my other Macs via an ethernet network with a shared DSL line, I just put in the same LAN settings for the Titanium and in seconds I was on the 'net (when finished, Apple's configuration program launched me into Internet Explorer 5).

My first impression, as I surfed the web and actually used the Titanium, was regarding the size of text. My Wallstreet is of the 13.3" screen variety, and though it has the same number of pixels as the larger 14.1" screens, the pixels are smaller and closer together. Thus 12-point text on my Wallstreet looks more like 9- or 10-point on most computers. I usually resort to writing in 14- or 18-point just so I can read what I'm doing without squinting.

But text on the Titanium is beautifully huge! Within minutes of booting I'm already sighing with contentment at how enjoyable writing is going to be on this system. While I can see the value of including more pixels in the same amount of space, having an 8-point menu bar is not my idea of fun. And if you expand the size of text, menus, and icons to compensate, what have you gained? Certainly no extra space. It might be nice if the screen were switchable to 1400x1024, but I wouldn't use it that way often.

[High Resolution Picture]

To show the screens at actual size, I took pictures of my 13.3" Wallstreet and 15.2" Titanium screens from the same distance and overlayed them. It's a little fuzzy, but you get the idea: the Ti's pixels are much larger than on my Wallstreet (note how much space the same menubar takes on each screen).

[High Resolution Picture]

The Titanium screen is only a hair smaller than the image area of a standard Apple 17" Studio CRT (but it's a lot lighter).

Preliminary Testing
The Apple/Excite startup page I'd been sent to by the registration program was new to me (I have all my Macs connect to a custom start up page on my work's website), so I explored it for a bit. I ended up watching various movie trailers from Apple's website and discovered another dreadful mistake on Apple's part: this $3500 laptop only comes with basic QuickTime, and every time you watch a video, it asks if you'd like to upgrade to QuickTime Pro. Lame, incredibly lame. That's like buying a new car and seeing the low fuel light come on as you drive it out of the parking lot. Does Apple really need the extra $29.95 for QT Pro?

Although I was annoyed by Apple's cheapness, I was impressed with the Titanium's ability to do Internet video. Over my DSL line I was able to watch the highest quality trailers and everything worked perfectly.

(Though I must say I was puzzled that each of the QuickTime trailers used a different interface. Some used MoviePlayer, others a separate movie window within the browser, and others embedded a controller in the middle of the browser window. One of them rudely changed the resolution of my screen to 640x480 without asking, screwing up the sizes and positions of all my Finder windows. I think there's a special place reserved in hell for bad programmers who do that to people.)

After surfing a bit, I went to download.com and searched for "LCD" and found a program to test my screen for bad pixels. LCD screens almost always have a stuck pixel or two as it's nearly impossible to make a perfect display. (Apple won't replace a display unless it has multiple bad pixels very close to each other.) With 2,654,208 LCD elements on the Titanium's display (1152 x 768 times three colors), I was sure a few would be bad. The only question was how noticeable they would be.

LCD testing software simply fills your screen with various solid colors so you can see if there are any pixels glowing. Depending on which of the three elements (red, green, blue) that make up a color dot is bad, the pixel may only show up on a certain colored background. Sometimes an element is completely dead: it's a tiny dark spot. Sometimes it won't turn off, so when your computer tells it to change to a particular color it's a different color because the green (or whatever) element is on.

Sure enough, I had a bad pixel. It was about an inch and half from the bottom and near the right side, which seemed out of the way enough. It was a bright green pixel that only showed up on the darker colored screens. I tried the old "massage" trick -- rubbing the pixel. This just put fingerprint marks on the screen. Then, suddenly, as I was rubbing, the pixel moved! Now the bright green pixel was a half inch lower. No matter how much I rubbed, it wouldn't go away. I decided not to worry about it, though it was annoying: when playing a letterboxed DVD movie, it was visible in the black frame.

(Update: I lived with the bad pixel for a few days, and I'd intended to include a photograph of it in this report, but just a few minutes ago, while writing this, I rubbed it and it went away! It appears to be fine, now, but I suppose it could come back. LCDs are funny things! Secondary Update: The bad pixel officially "comes and goes." When I ran Oni, it was noticeable, as was another near the top. But in both cases rubbing the pixel made it go away, at least for a few hours/days. That's not objectionable to me, as long as they keep going away. At least you can't see them on a white word processing screen.)

Now I decided it was time to try the DVD drive. Would my unit have the disc eject problem?

I inserted the Apple Hardware Test CD that came with the Titanium. I'd never used a slot-loading drive before, so I wasn't sure how it worked, exactly. My first surprise was how hard it was to push the disc in. I had to sort of work it in an inch or so, and suddenly it grabbed it and sucked it in the rest of the way. The drive whirled, stopped, then spun up and the disc showed up on the desktop. (Oddly, the Apple Hardware Test CD has nothing but a SimpleText "readme" on it. Apparently you must boot from that disc to access the testing system.)

Instead of dragging the disc to the trash to eject it, I tried the new Eject key (Function 12). I pressed it. Nothing happened. I pressed it again, holding it down for a couple seconds. That worked. The drive spun down, clicked, and out came the CD. Yeah! No ejection problems.

Time to try a DVD. I'm into movies, so this feature was important to me. How well would the software decoding work? My Wallstreet had hardware decoding via a PC Card decoder and I'd seen reports that it worked better (though my own experience was that movies on my Wallstreet tended to skip quite often).

I happened to have The Fifth Element handy, so I slipped it into the slot. The drive brought in the disc and the Apple DVD software automatically launched.

And gave me a bizarre error: something about "The screen can't be used at this size." DVD Player quit after that, so I tried switching the screen to a different resolution and relaunching it. But it always gave me the error. I tried several different resolutions, but nothing helped. Weird!

Finally I tried to eject the DVD. Oh no! It wouldn't come out!

The drive would grind away, fail to eject the disc, and remount to the desktop and launch Apple DVD Player which would give its error and quit. Arrrghh.

I'd read a report that an Apple technician had told a customer to use a business card to get the disc out, so I tried this. Since the disc appeared to be hitting the top of the slot, I told it to eject again, then slipped the corner of a business card at the top of the slot. It worked! The disc and the card came out.

[High Resolution Picture]

The business card eject trick works fine and doesn't seem to hurt anything.

It was then I realized that The Fifth Element is a double-sided DVD, with the widescreen and full screen versions on separate sides. I'd intended to play the widescreen side, of course, but I'd apparently put it in upside down. I flipped it over and tried it again. This time everything went perfectly: the disc mounted, Apple DVD Player launched and let me play the movie.

All I can say about this experience is "Wow!" DVD movies on the Titanium are amazingly clear. On my Wallstreet's 13.3" screen I'd seen pixelation at full screen size (the resolution of a DVD isn't really very high), but here there was hardly any (I don't know why). The picture was just glorious. I actually watched ten or fifteen minutes of the film, mesmerized by the display. With no dots visible, it was far better than my ordinary TV.

But it was time to quit and eject the disc. Unfortunately, the drive was still acting up. My heart sank as I realized I'd have to send my new Titanium back to Apple for repair. The stubborn part of me wanted to fix it myself, but the logical side knew that wasn't a good idea. Apple has identified the problem and claims the fix is easy for them to do, and with the tight tolerances of the TiBook, it was much smarter to let them do it. Besides, if it cost Apple some money to fix it, then they'd be smarter about not shipping out buggy computers in the future.

I played with the business card ejection technique for a bit. The disc was missing the slot by an amazingly tiny amount. The slightest bit of business card in the slot forced the disc down enough to eject cleanly. It was aggravating for my new computer to have an alignment flaw of what had to be thousandths of an inch that caused such problems.

I also realized that the felt covers of the drive were extremely stiff, but after several injections and ejections, they loosened. Perhaps the drive just needed some use. Maybe if I pressed down the disc as it came out, it would help realign the drive. I tried this, pressing relatively lightly, just hoping to "encourage" the drive to seat itself the tiniest bit lower.

That's when disaster struck.

The laptop suddenly turned off. No warning, no nothing. Just off. The DVD was still half in the drive, and without power, I had to physically wrestle it from the tight felt lips. I got it out and restarted the computer. It came up with a clock error: the date was 1973. (Since I was still connected to the Internet, I told the Date & Time control panel to use a network time server, and it corrected the date.) But this unexplained loss of power worried me even more than the DVD eject problem.

Twice more, while fiddling with the drive, the power cut, usually when I was pushed down on a disc. Very strange. Rebooting, everything seemed fine. Regular pressure on the case did not seem to cause the power problem. The TiBook worked find in various positions (upside down, etc.) and "flexing" the case didn't hurt anything. Even pushing on the area above the drive didn't cause the power outage, though I did hear scraping as the disc spun. Apparently my unorthodox solution was at fault, though it appeared to fix, or at least help, the ejection problem. I injected and ejected The Fifth Element a half dozen times without a problem, but later, while using a CD with the Ti not level, a disc wouldn't eject.

I wasn't sure if I was going to send my shiny new Titanium back to Apple to fix the only annoying DVD eject problem, but the power-off issue struck me as horrible. While using the TiBook over the weekend, I experienced three more power-offs, neither having anything to do with the DVD drive. This had me worried: there was no rhyme or reason to the power-offs, and other than one incident of attempting to use the Titanium sideways while in bed (I did this frequently with my G3), I certainly did nothing usual with the laptop. Once I was just shifting it a few inches and it shut off.

I reread the reports on this power problem on Macintouch and it appears to be caused by angling the PowerBook and/or flexing it so that the battery contacts disconnect from the unit, causing a lack of power. Solutions include only using your Titanium flat on a desk (not an option for me, since that defies the whole purpose of having a laptop); stuffing some paper or padding in the battery compartment to make the battery fit in the slot tighter; bending the battery contacts so they connect tighter; or sending the Ti back to Apple (there appears to be questions as to the effectiveness of this -- one reporter still had the problem even after the unit had been "fixed").

[High Resolution Picture]

My unit was made 2/24/01 and includes the black padding at the back. I didn't have severe turnoff problems, but I did experience it a few times, so if this padding was supposed to solve the problem, it didn't.

[High Resolution Picture]

I bent the contacts on my battery connection just the tiniest bit (see the outer two pins) and it seemed to help: I can now hold the Ti with on hand (by the DVD drive) and it won't shut off like before.

Next Segment: In Part IV, Marc installs RAM and customizes his TiBook.

Titanium Report - Part 1
Marc receives his Titanium PowerBook and reports his initial impressions.

Titanium Report - Part 2
Analysis of the exterior of the Titanium PowerBook continues with an exploration of the screen and keyboard.

Titanium Report - Part 3
Marc powers up the TiBook and discovers the first problems.

Titanium Report - Part 4
Marc installs RAM, partitions the hard drive, and begins personalizing his Titanium wonder.

Titanium Report - Part 5
Performance results: Marc benchmarks the Titanium PowerBook against a 500-mhz desktop G4 in a variety of tests.

Titanium Report - Part 6
Should you buy a Titanium PowerBook now or wait for version 1.1? In this final segment, Marc comments on a variety of issues and concludes with his analysis of the Ti's worthiness.

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