TiBook G4

[CelGen]

Aside form the fact that the hinges suck in the model I love this laptop better than the later G4 powerbooks.

It's the 1ghz model and came with an 80gb drive, 1gb ram, DVD/CD-RW Superdrive, the AC adapter and a battery that holds for three minutes. I put a fresh install of 10.4+Classic, iLife '05 and Office:Mac and it it's great. I do see the right hinge starting to buckle a little unfortunately and it has a NASTY temporary pink tint from the dying backlight when you turn it on or wake it up but hey, it was $10.

 

[unity]

Nice! The hinges are a horrible design. I never had one break, but I did pick up a TiBook adjustment kit. It had shims, tools, lubricant and directions for adjusting the hinges. Once I did that I never had an issue again. I think once they are broken in they need at least one adjustment.

Anyway, I love this design. It clean and simple yet still interesting to the eye. And to think that the PowerBooks and MacBooks that followed were not as thin as this one was for some time.

 

[TheWhiteFalcon]

Still has the thinnest bezel of any of the Apple laptops.

 

[ScutBoy]

Yup - Ti's are one of my favorites as well.

 

[Unknown_K]

Is that the model of he last os9 booting tibook? new hinges still available?

 

[TheWhiteFalcon]

Yes, it's the fastest, finest Native9 Apple laptop. The iBooks may have kept going on a bit longer, but it's the fastest OS 9 portable for sure.

As for the hinges, not sure.
 

EDIT: The iBook G3 800 & 900MHz kept going for about a month past the discontinuation of the 1.0GHz TiBook.

 

[Gorgonops]

I've gone through a few TiBooks, with a dog-eared original 400mhz model followed by an 667mhz as work machines, and later ended up with a free 867mhz. (The slower twin of the 1Ghz.) And honestly... there were things I liked about the design but I really can't say they were good laptops. Their composite construction depends on binding a lot of unlike materials together (IE, sheets of titanium screwed to/wrapped around/bonded to plastic and steel frame pieces) and it only takes one pretty minor impact to ruin the machine. A sure fire way to tell if a Ti has ever been dropped is to open the screen and pick the computer up off a table by the front right corner where the CDROM-drive is; a new out-of-the-box Ti was nice and stiff, but in my experience it was rare to find one more than a year old that doesn't creak and bend semi-alarmingly.

My personal 867Mhz I took home after a user ripped the screen half off after one of the hinges jammed mid-opening. (I guess they liked to do it with a dramatic flourish.) Net cost was still zero since I traded a working LCD screen off another dead Ti to a company that specialized with replacing the Apple hinges with stronger all-steel third party units for a repair. If you're looking to repair yours I'd totally recommend seeing if the third-party units are still available. They don't quite look the same but the peace of mind is worth it; if you don't get it repaired be careful opening and shutting it, that "ripping the screen off" thing wasn't that rare of an occurrence.

 

[mitchW]

I'd like to know where to get a TiBook adjustment kit... I have two TiBooks both with quite stiff hinges

 

[unity]

I dont think they make them anymore.

 

[TheWhiteFalcon]

eBay or LEMSwap would be your best bet.

 

[Cory5412]

Congratulations, this is a pretty great specimen!

This is a pretty great specimen of what was unfortunately a terrible model. It's the fastest PowerBook G4 to boot directly into Mac OS 9 without requiring the use of Classic Mode, but I never found mine to be faster at running anything than my 500MHz PowerBook G3 ("Pismo") was, and to be honest, I wasn't impressed with the way the screen died on mine just 92 or so days out of the warranty period. It turned out that a fresh cable fixed it, but what a bad death for such an expensive piece of "professional computer."

I still remember the serial number to my TiBook/1.0, after calling AppleCare about it so many times while it was still under coverage. After "the incident" I ended up just putting it on top of a 17-inch CRT monitor and using it like it was a desktop for about six months before trading it away for the pismo that replaced it, and was a better computer from a physical standpoint in almost every way. In theory the Pismo was slower, in the real world it was nearly the same speed, and most OS 9 apps I ever used (until you got to tasks like rendering really large video projects or 3d scenes) were already running at absolute top speed on the Pismo anyway.

 

[bibilit]

great laptop, i have one as well, still usable today for internet and basic stuff.

Mine is not nice looking, but screen is fine and working great.

 

[Byrd]

My Titanium PB has a special place in my heart - I'd just bought a house, was freaking out about all the money/converyancing stuff (the house came with a very incomplete, sub-par contract of sale), had just seen a solicitor and driving the long way home to de-stress.

Then, I spied something in a brown paper shopping bag in council hard rubbish - a PB Ti!  Took it home, plugged it in, and it crackled like crazy.  Switched over to another power brick and all was good.  It was owned by an ex-nun according to the documents within.  It was an 867Mhz model (since overclocked to 1067Mhz and not missing a beat), and in perfect condition.  I used it heavily for a few years and the hinges or paint never deteriorated.  It also handled the music/DJ set at my wedding, and a video montage!

After I found it that day, I had a thought that everything would be OK with the house I bought after my good luck of finding a nice laptop driving home.  Awww.

 

[TheWhiteFalcon]

http://www.radtech.us/products/glides#Titanium

There's a hinge maintenance kit. I might order one.

 

[unity]

^ Nice! I looked for kits but came up empty. I wonder if that was the same company I got mine from all those years ago. It came in a clear round tube with black ends. I thought I still had it on hand somewhere but I can not locate it.