Mac specs
Archives Forums/MacOS X Discussion/Mac specs
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| Ok... Assume for a second I have gone off my rocker here and want to purchase a mac powerbook... I want a G4 minimum... Ebay shows a huge range of them for a huge range of prices (even among machines with the same specs). What does a G4 400mhz compare to ROUGHLY in the pc world? And don't give me pie-in-the-eye Steve Jobs is god estimates. :) Real world, it feels about the same as........ How about an 800mhz? Or a 1ghz? 1.33Ghz? I placed a bid of 800 dollars on a G4 800mhz machine with 15" screen that didn't get any bids before the auction ended (he wanted 950 to start)... I haven't received any response as yet. I know I'm not planning on spending more than 1 grand... MAYBE 1200... but that's REALLY pushing it. I don't want something craptacular... But I neither want ultra top of the line because it won't be used much. Something roughly equivalent to about a 1.5ghz Pentium 4 in speed would be just fine... So what's the consensus? Kanati |
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| If you get a new iBook direct from Apple you get a 1.2GHz G4 with a 32MB Radeon 9200 for $999. (I think this is the best deal you can get on a laptop for any platform -- no name Linux laptops cost $700 and aren't of nearly this quality.) For $800 you can get a 1.25GHz eMac (yeah, I know, blech). Why bid $800 on an 800MHz box (second hand?)? Performance-wise, I'd say that the G4 compares favorably with a PC running at 1.5x the clockspeed. A dual-G4 compares favorably with a PC running at 2x the clockspeed. (Individual apps may run slower, but the OS uses the spare processor to keep things going.) Before you dismiss this as the effects of Steve Jobs's Reality Distortion Field (tm): 1) I'm currently (well, not at this moment!) playing World of Warcraft on my 2.5y old dual 1GHz G4 with its original Radeon 9000 (64MB I think). It is running faster than it did on my wife's 1.5y old 2.4GHz Dell (with a 128MB FX5200 video card), but slower than on my 2.4GHz Dell with a 256MB FX5600. It only chokes when I fly through Ironforge on a griffin (but so does my wife's Dell). 2) Photoshop, Firefox, et al launch and run as fast or faster on the Mac than the Dells (and they're not reliant on GPU the way WoW is). Incidentally -- BlitzMax runs dandy on my old dual G4, and (given that I don't think it takes advantage of dual processors) should run even better on a new iBook. |
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| Why bid $800 on an 800MHz box (second hand?)? Mostly because I'm not too "up" on mac pricing. What's the diff between an ibook and a powerbook? The ibook is the "budget" line? Like the imac? Kanati |
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| Kinda. the Powerbook has more screen resolution due to it's bigger screen, more extras such as Bluetooth, DVD writer etc, and arguably looks nicer. I have a single cpu 1.8GHz G5 which can be picked up in the Apple Refurb store for the same as a low end Powerbook. |
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| If you get a new iBook direct from Apple you get a 1.2GHz G4 with a 32MB Radeon 9200 for $999. And 256MB RAM. This is the exact machine I bought at the Mac store. It's a beautiful little machine and runs BlitzMax like a dream. To be fair, this machine is limited in certain respects ... 1024x768 max resolution, for example. But, for the money, it's hard to complain. |
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| Yeah, and as I said, it will get little use outside of blitzmax... So the lower res probably wouldn't hurt me too awful much. I'm giving serious consideration to it. I wasn't aware of the apple refurb store. That sounds promising. |
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| Dont know but in the latest tests Mac's and PC's are pretty closely matched with comparable systems as far as speed goes. http://www.barefeats.com/g5op.html Shame there aren't any 3D app benchmarks, allthough from what I've seen the PC is usually faster at rendering. and has high end 3D cards avaliable that don't exist for the mac. |
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| I think the Powerbook has more expansion options or more ports and such, but otherwise the ibook or that new fangled iScreen thingymabob is probably better value for money. I don't think I'd bother with a 400Mhz G4... go for at least 800Mhz. |
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| Thanks... Looks like I am getting that 800mhz powerbook (15.2" screen). The guy finally emailed me back and he'll sell it for 800 dollars. Since that's a bit more in my price range than the 1300+ I'd need to spend for a 14" (sorry, just can't see EVER using one of the 12" models) ibook new, and I do think I want to stick with a laptop model... That's what I'm getting. See... I may not like em much... But I'm willing to drop cash for one. :) |
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| Well, bear in mind that the 12" screen is only if you have no other choice. They come with adapters to hook them up to regular monitors you know. :) |
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| hehe... Yeah. I'll be taking this on the road with me though more than likely. So I'll want to make sure my brain don't explode trying to look at it for very long. :) |
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| I am new to the mac world (again, after 10 years abstinence) and re-entered by buying a 17" 1.5 GHz G4 Powerbook. Wonderful machine I must say. A bit steep at $2800 however, but I still defend the position that you have to get what you want in the first place, rather than spending the same or more on several models... As far as power is concerned, I was (still am) a bit disappointed. Raw calculation power wise, the 1.5 GHz G4 is about 1/3rd as fast as my IBM Thinkpad T42p (1.8 GHz Pentium-M). The look and feel of the GUI however appears about equal, if not a bit smoother on the Mac. And the wide screen on the 17" is awesome, if only they'd used a real HD format (1920 x 1440, or at least 1920 x 1280) it would also in the vertical be really useful. Now it's kinda narrow... Before the IBM I had a Dell Inspiron 8600 with 1920x1280 resolution. The screen was wonderful, but the rest was total crap. Stay away from Dell! My 2 cents... Cheers - Balt |
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| Nah Macs suck! Who the hell would use one??? /Me silently switches on my new eMac and tests new BMX module :p |
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| Before the IBM I had a Dell Inspiron 8600 with 1920x1280 resolution. The screen was wonderful, but the rest was total crap. Stay away from Dell! DOH! I have an 8600 with the UWXGA (1920x1280) screen and you are right the screen is amazing. But I can't agree with the other statement. I love it. It's a 1.7 Pentium-M with GeForceFX5650 128 meg card... I've never had a problem with IT, or the Inspiron 8000 I had prior to it. Personally, I'd never get anything BUT Dell unless I wanted to drop cash on an alienware or similar high-end gaming lappy. But to each their own I suppose. |
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| Yeah, most guys at Epic use Dell laptops and they have nothing but good things to say about them... |
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| Ok, let me expand: My Dell had two harddisk crashes within the first 3 months of use. When that happens with IBM (has happened once before in 8 years of thinkpad ownership), I bring it in to the nearest service people. If the HD still works for a data transfer, they ghost the disk onto the new disk and I'm up and running again in less than a day. With Dell, it first took me almost a week to convince them that the harddisk crashes after a few hours of use, after making an ugly noise (they in all sincerity asked me to video record it and play the sound to the support technician!). Well, after that, they sent me a new harddisk by way of a technician that wanted to take the old harddisk with right away. A couple hours of available runtime allows for a ghost, so instead of setting up my entire machine again (which takes anywhere between 2-3 days of work), I wanted to ghost to the new harddisk. Not only did the tech not even have the material with him (additional drive bay for instance), he also did a freakout on me regarding me not letting him take the old disk with him. After a long discussion on the phone with the homebase, he said it was ok but I had to ship it back to them within 2 days. So I network ghosted the old disk, got the machine back running, and then the display failed. Tech comes back (after a long struggle to find a suiting time and day, after they refuse to specify time of arrival any more precise than 5 hours). Luckily, in the meantime my IBM Thinkpad had been delivered and I had a machine to work off during that disaster. Oh, and the funny thing was: Dell support told me that in fact I was the one who screwed up, not them, because I bought the wrong model. The inspiron is not meant to be in constant use, just occasional home use. Professionals should be the latitude line of laptops. What a crock of sh...!! So here you have my story why I will never buy Dell again. There's another one with a Dell Poweredge server I had bought about 4 years ago which has (and always had) system hangs every now and then despite numerous OS reinstalls. But they won't replace the motherboard or memory because I can't proof it's a component fault. This despite extended warranty I had purchased. I should also add that the inspiron was by far the cheapest manufactured laptop I had ever seen. titanium thinkpad, or aluminum powerbooks guarantee for a much longer life. Argh. While I'm at it the beginning was bad, too: After I ordered from their website, even BEFORE the laptop was delivered, they had the 1.7GHz model out at the same price I paid for the 1.5 GHz model, and I saw that on a flyer they snail mailed to me. That's just not right... |
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| sounds like you just had a bad experience... The inspiron is the pro line... The latitudes are just low end models. I have my 8600 on at least 8 hours a day and sometimes more. I also lord over quite a number of dell desktops at work as well and if we call for tech support we get someone there within 4 hours of the call. But to be honest... In the last 4+ years we've had leases with Dell... We've had to call a tech twice. Once a motherboard took a crap and once a hard drive took a dump. That's it. I, on the other hand, never cared for the thinkpads... But laptops are, I think, a very personal preference based item. You find one you like the feel of and you'll stick with them forever. :) |
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| As my brother in law (who works at Dell USA) told me: "You're in Switzerland. We heard support was bad over there, not much we can do from here.". He did try hard however, and it was only through his intervention that the videotaping requirement for the failing HD was waived... I agree about the personal taste with the laptop, but there are just certain manufacturing quality issues that you only become aware of when you see (and feel) those computers side by side. The keyboards on the mac and thinkpad are different, but of equal quality for instance. The Dell doesn't even come close. I had a stuck key within a month on the Dell (after lifting off the key cap i saw a piece of plastic that wasn't properly shaped, fixed that with a knife..). When adjusting the monitor angle, both the powerbook and thinkpad are rock solid, the Dell was worn out after a month or two. Those are not personal taste but quality issues. OTOH, you pay only a little more than half for the Dell, guess you just get what you pay for. |
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| Any laptop that can't stand up to being turned on as much as a desktop computer is a piece of crap ... period. Send it back and buy from somewhere else. There's no reason to use them for shorter periods of time... |
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| With a laptop, the main consideration is airflow. Although it may be called a laptop, in reality it's much better to use it on a flat surface like a table, this allows air intake via vents in the bottom. |
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| Agreed. My PC laptop is getting a little long in the tooth and as such, the fans aren't what they used to be. I had to buy a laptop cooling platform so the air could move better around the bottom of it. Still works fine though ... heat is your primary enemy on laptops. |
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| heat is your primary enemy on laptops. That and battery life. |
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| I mean enemy to their health. Battery life is generally only sucky to the user. :) |
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| Incidentally, the rumor mill is saying Apple will release a headless eMac at MacWorld Expo in January for $500-600. This will most likely be a very compact pizza box in shiny white plastic that can be laid flat or stood on its side and have a 1.2+GHz G4 and a combo drive. The main difference between powerbooks and iBooks (aside from display resolution on the larger powerbooks) is dual monitor support. iBooks only do mirroring, but Powerbooks let you use dual displays at different resolutions, e.g. code on one window, running program in the other). You haven't seen dual monitor support until you've seen how well Apple does it ;) ... and has done since 1986! |
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| The main difference between powerbooks and iBooks (aside from display resolution on the larger powerbooks) is dual monitor support Powerbooks also have much better quality LCD displays, metal cases, DVI output, PCMCIA slot, s-video and composite video out, ... |
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| Thus far... my powerbook Ti is a great big MP3 player and currently, as I type this, I'm watching a dvd... ABBA The Definitive Collection. I've messed with bmax very little with it. Go figure. :) |
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