I would DISAGREE with Mr Dennis on this.
Yes, if you could, I'd suggest external speakers. But for general use, the
3400 is MUCH, MUCH louder than the 1400, and the acoustic clarity is
significantly better. I spent 9 years doing professional audio (ie
designing sound systems and running them) around the world, and one pet
project was the study of acoustics of laptops' sound output.
The Powerbooks were by far significantly better than any other models (Compaq
Presario's had a tolerable second, due to good speaker placement and some
help by Bose ("no high's, no low's, must be Bose"!).. THe 3400 & Kanga
outperformed every other Powerbook to date (our last comparison test was on
Pismo's & iBooks), both in terms of volume and clarity.
Of course that may all mean nothing to you who need something for a specific
project (ie., your son), but I would suggest that you consider a 3400c (or
Kanga) before giving up completely.
The Clamshell iBook is not going to be any improvement over the 1400.. A
single speaker, same size, same quality--you'll not do any better.. The Dual
USB iBook is even worse.
Headphones are a great idea, though you may of course deal with other issues
(does he put up with headphones or not, and can he be monitored with
headphones). From a professional perspective, I'd NOT recommend headphones,
especially in-the-ear style) for daily use. The reason is that many folks do
permanent damage to their ears by repeatedly running volumes too high,
without realizing it. THe worst case of this is when you've got a
speaker/earpiece in one ear, and nothing in the other ear. Your brain doesn't
listen to just ONE ear--it combines volume from both ears, so you tend to run
volume too loud in one ear (if you've got just one earpiece in). i worked
with some folks on this, about 5yrs ago, when the in-the-ear monitoring
systems were just coming out.. Many musicians did permanent damage to their
ears using these systems improperly. THat's why I tend to frown on headphones
for daily use...
TO summarize--the best sound you'll find in any Powerbook is the 3400/Kanga.
It is LOUD (about 12db louder at 1meter than the next closest Powerbook--the
Wallstreet), and the full-frequency range is nearly 4x's better than any
other Powerbook. Don't even compare these to PC's--you'll be horribly
dissappointed..
Thx,
David
In a message dated 12/23/02 2:36:17 AM, somebody wrote:
> 3400/kangas are not that much better sounding than 1400c powerbooks.
>The concept of having all those speakers to give the "surround" effect is
<snip>
>A. E. Dennis
>
>>Ted Man wrote:
>> I am looking for a good multimedia laptop to run
>> educational software for my autistic son. I need a
>> ‘book with good speakers, since much of his software
>> uses spoken commands as well as visual cues. We’ve
>> been using my old 1400c until now, but we’ve had to
>> attach external speakers since the 1400’s sound output
>> is so pathetic.
>
>> Would the 3400/Kanga be a good choice for this? I
>> remember that they had those “subwoofers” built into
>> Ted
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