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dartzorichalcos

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Mar 23, 2007
1,010
0
Atlantis
My buddy had a 12" iBook G4 and his friend had a 12" PowerBook G4. I noticed that the PowerBook's matte screen is such more crisp and better quality. Is it HD and has anybody noticed this?
 

iSee

macrumors 68040
Oct 25, 2004
3,540
272
I'm pretty sure all models of both are 1024 x 768. When I compared my friend's 12" powerbook screen to my 12" iBook G4, the powerbook did look a lot better, but I thought at the time it was just brighter.
 

CRAZYBUBBA

macrumors 65816
Mar 28, 2007
1,118
6
Toronto/Houston
I'm not a big techie but my friend has a last gen ibook and I have a last gen Powerbook, we've always agreed that we'd rather watch movies on my comp. IMO, things look better on the powerbook. maybe because my video card is 32 mb better?
 

GimmeSlack12

macrumors 603
Apr 29, 2005
5,406
13
San Francisco
The PowerBook has more VRAM and also supports higher resolutions as well as having a brighter display than the iBooks. I still kinda kick myself over being too cheap to buy the 12" PB over the 12" iBook. The iBook has served its purpose well, but damn this very very dim screen and lack of different resolutions.

Of course the PB is going to look better when it is brighter and probably has a smaller dot pitch as well.
 

TraceyS/FL

macrumors 601
Jan 11, 2007
4,174
316
North Central Florida
The PowerBook has more VRAM and also supports higher resolutions as well as having a brighter display than the iBooks. I still kinda kick myself over being too cheap to buy the 12" PB over the 12" iBook. The iBook has served its purpose well, but damn this very very dim screen and lack of different resolutions.

Of course the PB is going to look better when it is brighter and probably has a smaller dot pitch as well.

Hey - maybe it's a Central Coast thing ROFL!!!!!

I was too cheap to buy the PB too - maybe because i hadn't spent enough time in SLO looking at them?? I lived in SM and was packing my house to move to FL. When I got here i just walked in to the Apple Store and said "i want a 12" iBook".

It's still running - but man, it's slow and the screen on the MBP i'm using now is soooo much nicer!

So, it's gotta be the fog/wind/cold of the Central Coast that does it!! :D

Tracey..... a 3rd generation Central Coaster that doesn't miss it a bit!
 

mkrishnan

Moderator emeritus
Jan 9, 2004
29,776
15
Grand Rapids, MI, USA
It was my understanding that the screen went through some kind of manufacturing change at least once over the course of the PB G4 12"'s lifespan. I don't remember what the cutoff was, and it did not effect resolution, color depth, etc, but the report was that it changed how it looked overall in terms of brightness and image quality. Probably viewing angle also.

IIRC, the original iBook G4 and the PBG4 12" on the market at that time had the same screens, though.

The other thing to keep in mind is age and usage (and of course, cleanliness). As the backlight decays on your screen, the color quality will go down unless you re-calibrate, and the overall image quality will reduce.
 

Father Jack

macrumors 68020
Jan 1, 2007
2,481
1
Ireland
I'm pretty sure all models of both are 1024 x 768. When I compared my friend's 12" powerbook screen to my 12" iBook G4, the powerbook did look a lot better, but I thought at the time it was just brighter.
The powerbook has more video ram, but I too think they both have the same resolution.

FJ
 

Abstract

macrumors Penryn
Dec 27, 2002
24,889
921
Location Location Location
It was my understanding that the screen went through some kind of manufacturing change at least once over the course of the PB G4 12"'s lifespan. I don't remember what the cutoff was, and it did not effect resolution, color depth, etc, but the report was that it changed how it looked overall in terms of brightness and image quality. Probably viewing angle also.

IIRC, the original iBook G4 and the PBG4 12" on the market at that time had the same screens, though.



Yeah, the 12" iBook and 12" PB used the same screen up until the 1.33 GHz G4 model of the PB came out, which is when the PB got a sliiightly better screen. It still sucked though. It just happened to suck less. :eek:

When the 12" iBook got the ATI 9250 video card, it was just as good as the 12" PB other than a slightly dimmer screen (although the 12" PB had a crap screen as well), and bus speed was 133 MHz rather than 100 MHz or something cheesy like that. That wasn't even really a factor, since the bus speed was incredibly slow no matter how you looked at it, and so the PB didn't perform any better than the iBook.

When I bought my 1 Ghz 12" PowerBook, there WAS an advantage of owning the 12" PB over the 12" iBook. That disappeared by the 2nd Generation 12" G4 iBook (not G3). Anyone who bought a 12" PB rather than a 12" G4 iBook got ripped off, IMO. At that point, the only really good advantage of the 12" PB was in appearance, and a sliiiightly brighter screen that was still bad.
 

Collin973

macrumors 6502
Mar 29, 2006
259
0
My mom has a 12" ibook G4 and I'll do her tech support (answer questions, make sure it updates, etc when I'm back from college) and I can't stand the screen compared to my MBP. Of course, my mbp is nearly brand new, but still I turn up the brightness to full and the ibook's display is just plain bad compared to the mbp. I also had a 12" powerbook and the screen was definitely better than the ibooks. ...I really loved that 12" PB, but now I have a new lover ;)
 
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