SAN FRANCISCO — Some quick things that you may not know about Mercury.
Fan
Mercury does indeed have a fan and it works just like the one in previous PowerBooks – it switches on after a certain temperature has been reached in the CPU. We don’t know what that temperature is yet because we haven’t had one to play with long enough.
Resolutions
Merc supports 1152*768 native resolution, but it can switch to “keyhole mode” (the opposite of letterbox mode) to run things that require different resolutions like games, presentations, etc. In addition to 1152*768, it can run in 1024*768 (“traditional” PowerBook mode), 800*600 and 640*480. And something you probably didn’t know: Mercury can run at up to 1600*1200 through the video out port when the lid is closed. Cool.
CardBus
Merc has a single Type II PC card slot that is CardBus enabled. Side note: the little mesh door that covers the PC card slot is in a close tie with the brushed aluminum power button as the coolest design feature of this machine.
Ethernet Autosensing
Forget your crossover cable? That’s Ok! Merc has an autosensing Ethernet port that will switch from straight to crossover when it is plugged into another Mac.
Housekeeping
- About 30 more pics are going up late tonight, good Merc closeups included.
- The Tuesday galleria images are only partially posted because I left it uploading in my hotel room and probably got dropped 🙁
- We will switch to calling “Mercury” (it’s code name) the PowerBook G4 or Titanium (it’s given name) after Macworld. Now that it has been officially released…
