I’ve been considering a laptop upgrade since sometime in early 2010. However, in all of the time since then I haven’t found anything that I like and that would be a significant upgrade over the old 12″ PowerBook. The best upgrade I’ve found is the 11″ MacBook Air, but for my purposes it really isn’t a huge improvement over the PowerBook, and I’ve put off purchasing one for quite some time.

Recently, the original 60GB hard drive in the PowerBook let me know it was approaching the end. I could have taken the opportunity to get a shiny-new Core i7 11″ MacBook Air, but instead I bought a Transcend 32GB IDE SSD (TS32GSSD25-M) off of eBay for $50 AUD, or approximately 1/30th of a MacBook Air. While this Transcend SSD isn’t particularly fast by SSD or even SATA standards, it is much faster than the original 4200RPM IDE drive.

The install was fairly straight forward, but there are a few details to note.  I used the iFixit guide for disassembling the PowerBook– I have nothing to add here, and like always, iFixit provides excellent and accurate information.  The SSD fits into the PowerBook with no modification.  However, on this particular SSD it is necessary to set the master/slave/cs jumper to master or the SSD will cause the system to freeze when waking from sleep.  I found this out the hard way and had to open the PowerBook up a second time and set the jumper.  As far as the jumper goes, you’ll have to either cut the Apple plug to allow room for a full-size jumper, or make a jumper of your own.  I made a jumper out of small-diameter bus wire and installed it between the Apple plug and the drive.

After installing the drive I reset the PRAM/NVRAM, installed 10.5, iScroll2, set the dock to 2D (defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES; killall Dock), setup MobileMe to sync my settings* and that’s it.

*- I haven’t upgraded to iCloud, and probably won’t until I have to.  I have a few pre-10.7 Macs and iOS 3.x devices that I’d like to continue using.

The system seems a bit more responsive than with the old drive: applications open very quickly and booting is marginally faster.  I haven’t had the SSD installed long enough to determine if battery life has improved.  I’ll update the post with any changes to battery life and other observations after I’ve used the new drive for a while. Battery life seems unchanged and has been very similar to what it was with the old drive.  While I suppose the four hour battery life is alright, it’s very disappointing when coming from a year and a half of using an iPad that only needs to be recharged every two or three days.  Aside from power consumption, the near-silent operation is a nice improvement and everything seems to run a lot cooler.  Overall, swapping the SSD into the PowerBook resulted in only marginal performance improvements, but noticeable noise and temperature reductions.

News has been slow, so I’ll bring you up to date on a few of my smaller Mac-related projects.

First, I shuffled the RAM and hard drives around in an iBook G4 and one of the PowerBooks. A 5400RPM 120GB drive was moved from the 15″ PowerBook G4 to an iBook G4, and the iBook’s 7200RPM 60GB drive found a home in the PowerBook. The PowerBook also donated some RAM to leave 1.25GB and move the iBook up to 768MB. PowerBook G4 disassembly is pretty easy and quickly; iBook disassembly is awful. While I’ve opened more than a few iBooks, I would not recommend upgrading the hard drive in a G4 or G3 iBook to anyone, but if you really want to then you should read this 14 page guide: iFixit.

Result: In the end, the iBook was revived and was happy with the 120GB drive coasting at about 50% capacity, a big improvement from the 60GB drive struggling at over 95% capacity. The PowerBook didn’t seem to mind the slightly reduced amount of RAM.

Total cost: $0

Next, the Mac Mini received a new internal hard drive. The original disk in the 1.66 GHz Core Duo Mini was a 2.5″ Seagate SATA 100GB 4200RPM. This drive had not been used since the last upgrade consisting of a pair of 500GB LaCie Mini Hub Firewire 400 stackable drives, one of which was used as the boot drive. These drives work pretty well, but the cooling fans are annoying, and the 3.5″ drives are a little loud. The new internal drive is a 2.5″ Seagate SATA 500 GB 5400RPM. The swap was fairly easy and did not require the bravery or dexterity needed for an iBook hard drive replacement. The new drive installed without any issues, and the setup required nothing special. I used Carbon Copy Cloner to transfer the contents of the external 500GB drive to the new internal drive, then the magical “repair permissions” was performed, and finally Spotlight re-indexed the new drive.

Result: Performance seems similar, but waking from sleep takes less time because the external FW400 drives took longer to spin-up. Fan and drive noise has been significantly reduced.

Total cost: $100

Finally, the trusty 1TB LaCie F800 RAID 5 suffered a drive failure. The RAID has been running reliably for the past several years, and continued to run, though without drive redundancy. The F800 utilized four Seagate 250GB IDE drives configured as a RAID 5 with a usable 750GB of storage. As all four of these drives are the same age and have had the same usage, I decided to replace all four. The new drives are 320GB IDE TK725032 units form Hitachi acquired for $50 each from Mwave. I typically wouldn’t mention where I bought the drives, but due to their apparent scarcity this could be useful info. Mwave also offers the Hitachi 500GB IDE for about $75, but I opted for the smaller, less expensive drives due to my storage requirements and the lower power consumption of the two-platter 320 GB drive compared to the three-platter 500 GB.

If anyone cares, the TK725050/TK725040 (500/400GB) are three-platter drives and the TK725032/TK725025 (320/250GB) are two-platter drives. Both the two and three-platter Hitachi drives are quieter than the original Seagates. More data:

Seagate Barracuda 7200.8
Model: ST3250823A

Capacity: 250GB
Cache: 8MB
Weight: 635g
Startup power: 2.8A
Idle power: 7.2W
Idle noise: 2.8bels

Source: Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 Datasheet

Hitachi DeskStar T7K500
Model: HDT725032VLAT80

Capacity: 320GB
Cache: 8MB
Weight: 640g
Startup power: 2.0A
Idle power: 5.0W
Idle noise: 2.8bels

Source: Hitachi DeskStar T7K500 Datasheet

The usable capacity of the 1.28TB RAID is approximately 960 GB, a 28% increase over the original configuration. Data was transferred off of the RAID to one of the now unused 500GB LaCie Mini Hub drives, the new drives were installed and configured in a new RAID, and the data transfered back. The drive upgrade/replacement process was simple as the F800 rebuilt the RAID automatically. I also took the opportunity to upgrade the firmware from v1.32 to v1.50 on the F800 (I haven’t noticed any changes in the new firmware). Hopefully these 320GB drives will last a while because large capacity IDE drives are getting hard to find. The remaining three working 250 GB drives will be used in non-critical roles.

Result: Increased drive capacity, reduced noise, and reduced power consumption.

Total cost: $200

Useless Statistics

Drives in service: 19
Cumulative Capacity: 4.23TB*
Smallest Drive: 30GB
Largest Drive: 500GB
Average Drive Capacity: 239.5GB**

*- Storage capacity lost due to redundancy is not included
**- Average capacity calculated per physical drive

Intro:
This isn’t so much a review as it is a comparison between the MacBook and two other similar Apple portables: the MacBook Air and the 12″ PowerBook. Why? In my opinion (and many others) the 12″ PowerBook is one of the best portables Apple (or anyone else) has ever made. The 12″ PowerBook is small, light, durable, and a great overall package. There was a significant and glaring gap in Apple’s portable line after the discontinuation of the 12″ PowerBook. The MacBook and the MacBook Air are currently Apple’s smallest portables. I gave my opinion of the MacBook Air recently, and now it is time for the MacBook.

Pros:

• Good value
• Fast processor
• Large hard drive
• FireWire 400 port
• Nice size
• Well built and durable
• Easily accessible RAM and hard drive

Cons:

• LCD not LED back lit
• Keyboard not back lit
• Poor prices on RAM upgrades through Apple (no surprise)
• No option for ‘No RAM’ or anything less than 2GB
• Integrated video is adequate, but not impressive
• Small trackpad

Compared to MacBook Air:
While the MacBook’s profile is significantly larger than the Air, it is still relatively compact.  The MacBook has a faster processor, faster hard drive and more RAM.  That said, it doesn’t really feel any quicker than the MacBook Air; both are adequate.

Other than that, the trackpad is functional but on the small side, the absence of a back lit keyboard is annoying, and the battery life seems to be pretty good.  Speaking of batteries, the non-(easily)removable battery on the MacBook Air gets a lot of press, but I don’t care.  The MacBook has an easily removable batery, but I don’t see this as much of an advantage.  The only time I’ve removed the batteries from my other laptops was when they needed to be replaced, which is generally about once every 2-3 years.

Compared to 12″ PowerBook:
In comparison the the 4.6 lb. 12″ PowerBook, the 4.9 lb. MacBook is both larger and heavier. However, the MacBook gains a much lager display with that 0.3 lb. increase.  Aside from the obvious advantages of a larger screen and modern multi-core processor, the MacBook benefits from a better keyboard, the nifty Magsafe power connector, and a magnetic latch. One area that the MacBook really has an advantage is the hard drive.  Okay, not specifically the hard drive, but the ease of removal/installation of said hard drive.  The last 12″ PowerBook I took apart required the removal of somewhere on the order of 30 screws to get to the hard drive.  The MacBook hard drive is easily removed via a door in the battery compartment: ifixit procedure.

Conclusion:  While not as thin and cool as the MacBook Air, the MacBook betters it in terms of value and flexibility.  The MacBook didn’t stand a chance against the ‘coolness’ of the PowerBook or the ‘thinness’ of the MacBook Air.  But as you can see, the MacBook compares favorably to the PowerBook and MacBook Air in the key metric of ‘usefulness’ and is competitive in terms of ‘trendyness’.

Why did I buy a MacBook weeks prior to a likely product line update?  Reliability.

The 15″ aluminum PowerBook that this MacBook is replacing was a disaster.  It was purchased the day the new PowerBooks were released and started off with white spots on the screen, lost the keyboard back light and went through a total of four logic boards.  Oh, and it wasn’t even the first one we bought; the first one was returned becuase the latch wouldn’t close. Compare that to my 1.33 GHz 12″ PowerBook which was purchased near the end of the product cycle.  It has had zero hardware issues and has held up very well.  On the other hand, the MacBook Air, Mac Mini PPC 1.42, Mac Mini 1.6 Core 2 Duo,  15 GB iPod 3G and 16 GB iPod Touch were all purchased very early in their product cycles (first day available in many cases) and have performed flawlessly. Whatever the case, I wanted this MacBook to be reliable and didn’t want to take a chance on the successor.