News, info, and opinion by Mac users, for Mac users.

March 28, 2007

hardware

Putting the 12” under the knife

Posted Mar. 28, ’07, 7:25 AM PT by Derik DeLong
Category | Hardware

Seagate The 12” Powerbook still has a strong following, even among those that have since abandoned the beloved form factor (traitors). The MacBook is nice in all its 13.3” glory, but it just doesn’t have that tiny feel of a 12”. Once you find a former owner, you’re likely to get a ten minute tirade about how Apple ditched what was perhaps the perfect laptop for those with two machines.

I’m one of those nuts, except I still own mine. I still use it daily and will be putting off purchase of a new machine until a suitable replacement is released by Apple (which won’t be too long if the current rumors hold any water). It’s an aging machine and with the RAM maxed out, I felt there was nothing left to do until I did some investigation about the hard drive.

Mine has a 60 GB 4200 RPM drive. The space is fine for what I do with it, but geez, 4200 RPM? That’s so old school. Replacing its drive is not so trivial as evidenced by tutorials. The idea of doing that much, worrying about damage at the same time always forced me to put the idea to the back of my head.

I finally bit the bullet and contacted a couple Apple service agents to see pricing on this little procedure. MacEdge quoted me a price of $75 for the labor. That’s not all that bad. All that was left was to purchase the drive of my choice. If I was going to be replacing the drive, I might as well go high end. My choice was a Seagate 7200.1 (100 GB 7200 RPM) hard drive ($110 at Newegg at the time).

I dropped off my pride and joy last night along with the new drive. I should be picking it up tonight, at which point I’ll do some informal testing and tell you all about it in excruciating detail.


5 Comments

asiafish said:

You will love it!

March 28, 2007 12:33 PM
Oliver said:

I'm writing this on a 12' powerbook.. I have one of the original models (867mhz) although I have upgraded to a 60gb 5400rpm HDD and 1gb of RAM.

I love how small this laptop is, and everytime I play with a MacBook I find myself walking away disappointed. If apple doesn't update its product line, I will probably end up buying a MacBook pro. If I can't have ultra-portability then I may just go all out and get a 15 incher.

But ideally, I'd like to see a 12' widescreen pro laptop from apple. I'd like to see them use NAND for some of the storage, perhaps for the system, with a regular drive for data.

And for me, they can do away with the optical drive all togather! Honestly, the only use i have for an optical drive is to watch dvds when I'm away on business.. but i though the idea was to start buying movies through iTunes..? For transfering files usb thumb drives rule, and for backup / storage an external drive is better than optical media.

Make me an ultra-portable without an optical drive, and with amazing battery life instead, and i'll buy it tomorrow. Seriously.

March 28, 2007 1:41 PM
lilrabbit129 said:

I agree. I had to do a similar upgrade on mine (the HD died). The extra space is great and the added speed is very welcome.

March 28, 2007 2:44 PM
Bill said:

I got a refurb MacBook (C2D 2.0GHz) to replace my 2 year old 12" Powerbook 1.33GHz.

But I've gone back to the Powerbook.

The MacBook is speedy, and has a very bright screen, but feels much bigger (no way will I have a 15" MBP)

But the biggest reason I stopped using it was its user-unfriendly input design.

I never got used to the unresponsive trackpad button (must press it hard, exactly in the center), or the freakish keyboard (no travel, and WAY too much space between the keys)

I am very much looking forward to the rumored 12" MacBook Pro and will buy it as soon as it comes out (summer?/fall?)

March 29, 2007 2:21 PM
Mr Roberto said:

On a day to day basis you probably won't notice the new hard disk so much - a 5400rpm one would give similar snappiness. But it comes into its own when you do big file transfers, like copying TV shows or video clips for editing.

I'm typing this on my 12" Powerbook. The RAM is already maxed out and after the hard disk died last year (I'd already upgraded it to a 40GB 5400rpm Hitachi), I put in a 7200rpm IBM that I'd been using as an external video editing drive (now I'm using an 80GB 5400rpm external drive).

I think the older "5400rpm internal, 7200rpm external" arrangement was better overall. You still get snappy file transfers, but with slightly increased battery life and a bit less heat.

March 30, 2007 7:57 AM

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