BestBuy to stop selling powerbooks?

I've been looken on bestbuy's website for the past week and have noticed that when you search for powerbook's it brings them up in the search but if you click on the link's they all have the pages removed, i've emailed them buy they just gave me a long winded answer that didnt even answer my question, so does anyone know if BestBuy is going to stop selling the powerbooks? or what? i read somewhere that whenever apple comes out with a newer product bestbuy just lets there inventory run out a lil in advance so that there not stuck with them.

any comments?

You're absolutely right about draining inventory before a new revision is released. New PowerBooks in the next month, maybe month and a half maybe.
EDIT: I hope. :teen:

I called up BestBuy here is what i was told, they where recalled or discontinued, I'm guessing where getting really close to our new powerbooks :miner:

Just went to the BB site and tried it. Did the same thing. Interesting.

When they do the speed bump does anyone have an opinion on a price change???

Josh

I thought you said in another thread that you worked for Best Buy...

Pizza God said:

I thought you said in another thread that you worked for Best Buy...

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Who me?

I was at best buy today. i asked for a powerbook and was told they were all recalled due to excessive heat issues.
They pointed a toshiba out, the new ones that are supposed to have superior battery life. They said, if I want a powerbook and can't have one, that was a comparable notebook.

I think I wanted to cry.
I've heard of the heat issues, but I wondered if it was really all that bad.

No...they are not all recalled due to excessive heat issues...The 15 inch WAS recalled, due to a battery problem, in which case they just send you a replacement battery...nothing wrong with the computer.

I'm no engineer, and I haven't been following Mac news very long, but if you can't keep a G4 cool in a Powerbook, how are they going to put a G5 in there? It won't be a slim 1" notebook anymore.

Avid6eek said:

I'm no engineer, and I haven't been following Mac news very long, but if you can't keep a G4 cool in a Powerbook, how are they going to put a G5 in there? It won't be a slim 1" notebook anymore.

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The fine folks at Apple have called it "the mother of all engineering challenges" or something like that. There won't be a G5 PB anytime soon, I'd imagine. Dual-core G4s probably, which will run faster, cooler, and more efficiently as far as battery life goes.

Don't know much about powerbooks, but I have a HP 3 Ghz P4 that puts out about as much heat as a space heater, they have 3.2 Ghz models that are pretty much the same, but failed at trying to put out a 3.4 Ghz model because of the excessive heat. Mine has a dual fan ducted system that runs all the time and REALLY kicks into high gear doing any graphics intensive things (like playing Halflife 2). It also weighs about 13 pounds and has a battery life under normal use of about an hour and a half.

My understanding is that G5s are really hot though. I can't imagine a thin and light notebook with a decent cooling system on it, but apple engineers seem quite clever at times

Toshiba, huh?

jessica said:

I was at best buy today. i asked for a powerbook and was told they were all recalled due to excessive heat issues.
They pointed a toshiba out, the new ones that are supposed to have superior battery life. They said, if I want a powerbook and can't have one, that was a comparable notebook.

I think I wanted to cry.
I've heard of the heat issues, but I wondered if it was really all that bad.

Click to expand...

I've been to best Buy in person in the last few days and they have powerbooks in stock and are in the process of depleting stock of the old iBooks for the newer ones. As for the Toshiba, they've really been pushing sales of the Satellite M30 for some reason? As for the comparison, there isn't one, I wouldn't waste my money.

As for heat, all notebooks get hot, it's unavoidable when you pack so much powerful circuitry into designs with the size, power and weight restrictions consumers demand. From experience, I have found that Mac notebooks have an advantage over PC notebooks in that they are not as susceptible to damage or malfunction from heat. My guess is that this is probably due to differences in architechtural design between PC and Mac circuit-boards and the use of superior components in Apple's higher end products.

The problem with PC notebooks is that quality drops-off when OEM's put high-end Intel chips into systems with inferior components and cost saving designs. While Intel's centrino chips mark a significant shift in energy and processing efficiency, OEM's have yet to design a decent portable product that uses it's full potential.

Apple's use of RISC has always been so far ahead of anything CISC manufacturer's could produce for the consumer market. I wouldn't be surprised in a few years to see PC OEM's abandon CISC altogether and we'll RISC based Windows machines in the not so far off future.
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Edit: I know people have been saying this for many years, however it's just a matter of time before the cost effective limit of producing and selling CISC is reached and other technologies become necessary. The reality is that so long as there are hordes of people willing to pay for inferior "cost-reduced" products there will be companies mass producing and selling it.

Bringing this full circle, if you buy a powerbook you can relax in knowing you have the best OEM-produced portable available today. Just make sure you buy the extended warranty too.

robbym said:

Apple's use of RISC has always been so far ahead of anything CISC manufacturer's could produce for the consumer market. I wouldn't be surprised in a few years to see PC OEM's abandon CISC altogether and we'll RISC based Windows machines in the not so far off future.

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I would consider the CISC world to be ahead in terms of processor technology. Please explain your feeling a little more....just want to see where your coming from.

Focus on Portable Computing

Avid6eek said:

I would consider the CISC world to be ahead in terms of processor technology. Please explain your feeling a little more....just want to see where your coming from.

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Theoretically, this is is a case where less is more. Rather than wasting time and energy processing complicated instruction sets it makes sense to save resources by processing only what is absolutely necessary. This has been the logic behind high-end servers for many years and is the logic for emerging information, wireless and high-speed internet technologies.

Perhaps I could have better separated my theoretical thoughts from my practical thoughts.

Theoretically I can see IT reaching a point where programs will become so complex and so much information will be available everywhere all the time that RISC or some derivitive will become a necessary standard for information processing. When this happens all the very complicated high tech CISC hardware will eventually be rendered useless, so while it may be very advanced and useful today ultimately CISC has a fatal flaw. This why I said that Apple and RISC are ahead of CISC OEM's. I was not referring to technological advance in terms of complexity as is the case with CISC today, I was referring to advance in terms of the simplicity, survival and evolution of the RISC design.

In practical terms I believe that today, RISC is the better approach for portable computing by design due to the special constraints, hazards and costs inherant to this type of computing.

In regards to home use desktop computing today, I too believe that CISC is currently more technologically advanced/complex and as we have not yet reached the above mentioned theoretical breaking point my own desktop computer is a custom built P4. Hence my avatar.

I hope this clarifies my comments.
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Edit: In simple terms, I believe each type of computing (e.g. home use, business server, portable computing) can benefit from either CISC or RISC architectures. My own choice is to use RISC for portable computing and high volume server functions and CISC for basic home computing.

Thanks for the explanation. I just didn't know where you were coming from, and I did notice your Avatar...that's what got me a little lost.

Power User

Avid6eek said:

Thanks for the explanation. I just didn't know where you were coming from, and I did notice your Avatar...that's what got me a little lost.

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Glad to clarify. I couldn't help but notice from your name and system specs that you're a pro user. How are you liking your dual G5 PowerMac? Did you switch from AVID to Final Cut? If so how are you liking it? I've considered the same but can't yet justify the cost. I expect to switch completely in the next few years.

I just got my new Mac last Thursday. It is my first Mac, and so far I am enjoying it very much. I am a PC Junkie...and that's more of where my SN came from. Avid, as in the literal definition...Marked by keen interest and enthusiasm...and 6eek, as in Geek.... I guess that makes me an Enthusiastic Geek

I am by nature a gamer...so most people would consider me to be one of the last people to switch over to the Mac. Personally I was just getting so tired of Windows. XP has been out for far too long, and it needs some updating. I was also sick of waiting for WinXP 64bit. So, in order to get a more up to date OS, I bought a Mac.

It's very hard to stradle the line between PC user, and Mac user. Primarily because they hate eachother. I've been disowned by my usual PC friends, and god forbid you say anything good about a PC in these forums. As long as I'm having fun and learning is all I care about...and getting in a few games

Avid6eek said:

I would consider the CISC world to be ahead in terms of processor technology.

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I suppose this is why both AMD and Intel now use Risc cores in their CPUs.

Amen-Moses

Both the Pentium and Athlon, in all flavors since their conception are CISC processors. CISC processor have instruction sets (MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, 3DNow).

Avid6eek said:

Both the Pentium and Athlon, in all flavors since their conception are CISC processors. CISC processor have instruction sets (MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, 3DNow).

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Don't teach granny to suck eggs, the Pentium 4 and the newer Athlons have RISC cores, they present a CISC view to the system by emulating the legacy instruction set.

The PPC does exactly the same thing btw, it emulates the older CISC instruction set to allow you to run older software but new applications are compiled into the RISC instruction set.

I'm not sure if you can actually give a Pentium 4 the RISC instructions directly but you can on the Xeon. The Xscale CPU is actually the RISC core without all the legacy bumf around it.

The Intel RISC core comes from their buy up of DEC a few years ago, at the time DEC produced the Alpha and StrongARM CPUs which were the dogs doodahs in the mid 90's but were starting to show their age. The ARM lineage became the standard embedded CPU of today.

Amen-Moses