[Zebulunite]

Originally Posted by chucker HD H.264 System Recommendations According to this, a 12-inch PowerBook is already well capable of playing 480p content at 24 fps, if not 30 fps (seeing as it's faster than the cited specs). Since the current display doesn't have the resolution to really show larger content anyway, it should be fine. If Apple were to switch to a widescreen resolution, however, such as 1280x800, 720p content would be watchable size-wise, and that's where the PowerBook would be at the edge.

I looked at that earlier, after having some trouble playing 480p and 720p trailers on my windows PC (Athlon XP 2800+, Radeon 9700Pro, 512mb Ram). The 720p trailer was unplayable on my system, and the 480p file only played back at about half speed. At first, I thought that Apple's recommendations were way off (hence my wondering how a Powerbook G4 would perform with the same files). However, I tried playing both files on another system (Dell Dimension 4550 with a 2.0 (or maybe 2.4) Ghz P4, Radeon 9000, 256mb Ram). The 480p file played back perfectly on the Dell, and the 720p file played better on the Dell than the 480p file on my Athlon XP system.

What would be nice (like everyone else has been saying) would be a widescreen Powerbook 12”/13” with a 1280x720 resolution screen (which could of course play back 720p files). But if they were to “just” upgrade the GPU(hopefully with DL DVI)/VRAM/Onboard RAM, I'd be happy.

A price cut would also be nice (epically if Apple barely upgrades anything else).