Apple Reviews

You'll hear all kinds of warnings and threats from Apple and Apple fans about buying third party adapters, but oddly enough the Apple Store sells third party adapters . . . and my Mac repair shop uses a third party adapter on their machines that costs about 40 bucks. Apple's own adapter, however, WILL break. The cord is just too cute (i.e. fragile), and if you do anything like what you're suppossed to do with a laptop (that is, if you sit with the laptop in your lap), forget it! Prepare to hand over another 100 bucks in a couple of months. I just got the iGo Juice (which Apple sells on their site) and it works fine. Further, it's actually sturdy. No, I'm not an iGo company shill. I just don't see the point of buying mediocrity because it's cute and has the little bitten apple on it.

After 6 months of use I"ve managed to sever the tiny wire from Apple's cute little adapter with its "stowaway" prongs (believe me, no heroic effort required). So now I'm down to less than 2 hours of battery power and 6-8 hours of word-processing before tomorrow's class. Okay, it was my fault, and I"ve got enough juice left to order a new one from Amazon. No big deal. But what's this? I was expecting to spend ten-fifteen bucks! At least there are cheaper, more rugged alternatives. In this case, substance beats out style.

(The solution proved to be the SmartDisk adapter for the Powerbook Titanium. It's less compact but no less "stylish" than Apple's "portable" adapter and far more effective--no sparks from the prongs, for one thing. And it even costs less--a comparative bargain.)

There's no real reason to have a nice-looking power adapter, but it's more useful to have one that works. In the month that I have used the Apple iBook, I've run into no trouble with the power adapter.

As sidey writes, the cable is rather short, but with the recent power adapters, there is inclduded an extension cord, allowing for a decent amount of reach. The plug itself when with the extension cord is a three-pronged connector, but without the extension is simply a foldable box that protrudes two inches. This is annoying, especially when plugging the power cord behind a bed or some place that there is very little room.

However, with the extension cable, everything is made better. I just don't know why Apple didn't have the power adapter always attached to the extension cord, because it makes more sense, though is less "compact." The normal power connector and the extension cable are easily interchangable, though it took me some time to figure out exactly where to pull off for fear of ruining the power adapter.

It is definitely nice.