[tvfollower]

I have a 2.53 GHz Dell Desktop...

When I buy a PowerBook next year, at maybe 1.4 GHz (it'll probably be at that...), will that be a problem for me?

I sometimes hear that a 1 GHz Apple is like a 2 GHz PC...but I don't believe that.

Can anyone explain this to me, and if I'll be happy?

[juanpacolopez]

Originally posted by tvfollower:
I have a 2.53 GHz Dell Desktop...

When I buy a PowerBook next year, at maybe 1.4 GHz (it'll probably be at that...), will that be a problem for me?

I sometimes hear that a 1 GHz Apple is like a 2 GHz PC...but I don't believe that.

Can anyone explain this to me, and if I'll be happy?

It's all relative.

Since you already have the desktop to play games on, I can say fairly confidently that you'll be quite happy.

Macs have always been poor at gaming, more because of poor ports and less because of hardware performance.

However, for your day-to-day functionality a 1.4Ghz G4 is MORE than enough. To put it in perspective, FCP on my Ti 1Ghz SMOKES a 2.4Ghz P4 w/ Premiere that's in a lab @ school. Granted it's different software, but they are (sort of) comparable to each other.

The only thing that you might think is slower is Word. I say this because as everyone knows, the MacOSX version of Word is AWFUL (while very pretty/functional) in terms of "speed". I blame Microsoft... if Apple can put together an app like Soundtrack (extremely demanding interface) that BLAZES through tasks on my machine, I would think a word processor should

It used to be that web browsing seemed slower under X... not so anymore w/ the newer builds of Safari. It also used to be that OSX felt less responsive than Windows (XP or 2k) in the interface... Panther pretty much solves this from what I've seen, and the time frame your looking at it should be released.

Overall, I think you'll be satisfied. I switched, and I've never regretted it a moment (except when those hot new PC games come out).

[chabig]

Think of it like race cars. Can the speed of two cars be compared simply by engine RPM? No, the transmission is important too. Just because the Intel car is running at 2530 RPM in first gear doesn't mean it is faster than the PowerPC car whose engine is running at 1400 RPM in fourth gear.

That's how it is with computers too. PowerPC processors do more 'work' per megahertz than Intel processors, so the overall speed of the computer is comparable.

Chris

[AlbertWu]

I've got a 2.26 ghz P4 on my desktop and an 867 mhz g4 on my powerbook. for menial tasks like aim, word processing, email web browsing, they perform about the same, cause these really don't tax the processor at all.

for more intensive tasks, like photoshop renders, mathematica calculations/animation renders, my PB blows the p4 away. partly cause the processor is "faster". mostly because windows just sucks.

[Evinyatar]

Originally posted by AlbertWu:
for more intensive tasks, like photoshop renders, mathematica calculations/animation renders, my PB blows the p4 away. partly cause the processor is "faster". mostly because windows just sucks.

On the other hand, I've got a 1.4GHz Athlon desktop (2 years old now) and a 1GHz TiBook (got it in june) and the Athlon smokes the TiBook in Cinema 4D XL 8. It's at least 20% faster. Both have 512MB RAM.

Most of the games I can play on the PowerBook I tend play on it rather than on the PC (except for BloodRayne, that's gotta be the worst port in the history of... well, ports), and they do run pretty smooth on it (the PC's got a GeForce 3 64MB, whereas the TiBook has a Radeon Mobility 9000 64MB). What I'm really waiting for now is a port of GTA: Vice City
As for everything else, I just work faster on my Macs than I do on the PC. The user interface is more convenient. And I know many people will say that that is just because I'm used to Macs and not Windows, but I've been using both platforms for a very long time now (I've been using Macs since the SE and PCs since Windows 3.11), so I can safely say I know pretty much everything there is to know about both.

As for the 1GHz PC = 1GHz G4 story, I don't believe that's true, or maybe rather based on bad benchmarks (like dnet's RC5-72, which relies heavily on operations the G4 is extremely good at, but which are not used as much in normal applications). The G4s lag behind PCs performance-wise, and that's a fact. Let's just see what the G5 brings, but alas you won't be seeing those in PowerBooks for a long time.

[Mithras]

Of course, *any* comparison of a desktop and a laptop will be unfavorable to the laptop.

Try comparing a G5 to a powerbook, or a desktop PC to a laptop PC. The processor speeds, bus speeds, hard drive speeds and everything else will obviously be much better in the machine in which heat, power, and space are not significant constraints.

The only real question is what is "good enough" for you.

[tvfollower]

All this mention of games is pointless, because I'm not a gamer.

Why I'm a bit scared:

-I've tried the PowerBook a few times, and for some reason the OS just seems...slow...and I don't know why...maybe it's all the animations...but I mean, with my PC, an alt-tab switches from program to program with no delay...on the PowerBook, it feels like I have to wait a second.

-I will be a doing a lot of word processing.

-Some people are saying that for menial tasks, a 2.53 GHz PC and a 1.4 GHz PowerBook would perform about the same, while others are saying that the PC would win...which is it?

Thanks

[neilw]

GUI sluggishness is a standard complaint against OSX. On a 1.4 GHz PowerBook (if it ever exists, grr) it really shouldn't be a problem per se, but I still don't think you'll get the same "snap" you get on Windows. Panther supposedly helps, and that's coming soon. And there are other things to compensate, of course. In general, I find OSX has a much more fluid, smooth feel, which is very comfortable to use despite the fact that I often wish certain things were quicker.

However, I find Word X (and, to some extent, the rest of Office X) to be stunningly, mind-numbingly, incomprehensibly slow. It's like they put giant delay loops all over the code. On my machine, just tabbing from cell to cell in a table can take a few seconds. The mind boggles.

My machine is not that fast by current standards (TiBook 550); it could be that on a fast enough machine, Office X becomes "OK", but I'm pretty down on it in general. If I didn't need to have it here I'd chuck it out the window in a heartbeat.

[juanpacolopez]

Originally posted by neilw:
GUI sluggishness is a standard complaint against OSX. On a 1.4 GHz PowerBook (if it ever exists, grr) it really shouldn't be a problem per se, but I still don't think you'll get the same "snap" you get on Windows. Panther supposedly helps, and that's coming soon. And there are other things to compensate, of course. In general, I find OSX has a much more fluid, smooth feel, which is very comfortable to use despite the fact that I often wish certain things were quicker.

However, I find Word X (and, to some extent, the rest of Office X) to be stunningly, mind-numbingly, incomprehensibly slow. It's like they put giant delay loops all over the code. On my machine, just tabbing from cell to cell in a table can take a few seconds. The mind boggles.

My machine is not that fast by current standards (TiBook 550); it could be that on a fast enough machine, Office X becomes "OK", but I'm pretty down on it in general. If I didn't need to have it here I'd chuck it out the window in a heartbeat.

On my TiSD, Word IS much faster than on my old ibook... however that's not saying much.

It is still unexplainably, unbelievably slow compared to every other app. Can't figure it oout. Excel is a bit better, but still not up to snuff. It's entirely useable on my configuration... but considering how well EVERY OTHER app runs by comparison, it's clearly bad code.