[Maflynn]

I am in the process if selling my dual qs and my cube I'm about ready to buy the powerbook. Here' my question any benchmarks available, I'd love to see how the new Alu stacks up against the old Ti. On one hand the Ti has L3 but the Alu has a better subsystem.

Any thoughts, opinions.

Also I would like to pick this up, at my local apple store but the idea of upgrading the hd to the 5600 rpm 80 gig is intriguing, would I notice any increase in performance with the faster hd? especially coming from a dual gig w/7600 rpm drive. My uses are office/net and devlopment work.

Thanks
I feel like a little kid, I want it now,now,now,now

Mike

[DigitalDNA]

http://barefeats.com/al15.html

[Maflynn]

Originally posted by DigitalDNA:
http://barefeats.com/al15.html

Thanks, I looked at barefeets earlier but I must have missed the link.

What about the faster hard drive, worthwhile or not?

Mike

[filmmaker2002]

Originally posted by Maflynn:
Thanks, I looked at barefeets earlier but I must have missed the link.

What about the faster hard drive, worthwhile or not?

Mike

I am a video editor and I thought of it this way...The last batch of TiBooks used 4200RPM drives, and they kicked ass. So what I did with my config is stick with the 80GB 4200 RPM drive...remember, it is an ATA-100 vs. ATA-66 on the TiBooks. Also, that 5400RPM is likely to reduce your battery life and produce more heat.

Take that extra $112 and buy
1) An extra 512MB stick from ramjet.com, crucial.com, etc. and config your Powerbook to use 1 512MB Dimm.
2) Take that $112 and put it toward a FW800 external drive.

If the 5400RPM upgrade were like $50, it would be worth it, but not at $112. Take it from me, that 4200RPM at ATA100 will be plenty fast for what you'll need and more RAM will always speed up your computer more than a slightly faster hard drive.

[vancenase]

Originally posted by filmmaker2002:
Take that extra $112 and buy
1) An extra 512MB stick from ramjet.com, crucial.com, etc. and config your Powerbook to use 1 512MB Dimm.
2) Take that $112 and put it toward a FW800 external drive.

If the 5400RPM upgrade were like $50, it would be worth it, but not at $112. Take it from me, that 4200RPM at ATA100 will be plenty fast for what you'll need and more RAM will always speed up your computer more than a slightly faster hard drive.

i completely agree! i could be wrong, but i've read that some 4200RPM drives (i got a hitachi in my 17") perform better than others ... so you might get lucky on that account as well and get a better performing 4200RPM drive.

[Maflynn]

Originally posted by filmmaker2002:
I am a video editor and I thought of it this way...The last batch of TiBooks used 4200RPM drives, and they kicked ass. So what I did with my config is stick with the 80GB 4200 RPM drive...remember, it is an ATA-100 vs. ATA-66 on the TiBooks. Also, that 5400RPM is likely to reduce your battery life and produce more heat.

That was kind of what I thought, especially since what I will be doing will not require heavy disk processing.

Mike

[vancenase]

woo hoo! with my last post, i finally hit member status!

[Daniel Bayer]

As far as the drives go, I think that might be true of the Fujitsu 60GB 4200 rpm versus the 5400 models..but not the new IBM Hitachi 7200 RPM 60GB drive. I think the power consumption is supposed to be around the same as the 5400.

If this stands true, then the speed increase will amount to a much improved production workflow and the amount of juice lost will be an easy trade off for the whopping speed increase.

Right now, this laptop drive is slightly edging out even some desktop 7200 rpm drives, according to barefeats.

I will get mine on Monday. I'll do the swap and tell you how she does.

[HAL9000]

Originally posted by Daniel Bayer:
As far as the drives go, I think that might be true of the Fujitsu 60GB 4200 rpm versus the 5400 models..but not the new IBM Hitachi 7200 RPM 60GB drive. I think the power consumption is supposed to be around the same as the 5400...

Is there anything to stop me from using that Hitachi drive (Travelstar 7K60) in my 550 Titanium? TIA

[amazing]

The HD in the Ti is user installable. The HD in the new crop of notebooks, the 12", 15" and 17" are NOT user installable. If you install it yourself, you risk voiding your Applecare. You could have an Apple Service Provider install it, but Applecare is a bit fuzzy. Some people have said that the laptop would be covered except for the HD, but in the past Apple has refused to work on laptops that didn't have the original HD in it. In other words, in the Ti, you had to put your original HD back in before they'd work on it. That's tough to do in the new notebooks...

Anybody know to clarify Apple's present-day position on that sticky point?

Here's a test of the 7K60, in an external firewire case.

http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/IDE/hitac...B_7200rpm.html

Here's a quote:

"I wish I had a spare Powerbook system (and the time) to compare them internally in a PowerBook (on the parallel IDE bus), especially since some readers seem concerned over possible heat issues with the 7200 rpm Travelstar model. However Hitachi has said this drive is designed for internal notebook use and other than a 10% higher powerup/spinup draw, the wattage used for read/write operations per their specs shows literally identical power consumption as previous 60GB/5400 rpm models"

[HAL9000]

Originally posted by amazing:
The HD in the Ti is user installable. The HD in the new crop of notebooks, the 12", 15" and 17" are NOT user installable. If you install it yourself, you risk voiding your Applecare. You could have an Apple Service Provider install it, but Applecare is a bit fuzzy. Some people have said that the laptop would be covered except for the HD, but in the past Apple has refused to work on laptops that didn't have the original HD in it. In other words, in the Ti, you had to put your original HD back in before they'd work on it. That's tough to do in the new notebooks...

Anybody know to clarify Apple's present-day position on that sticky point?

Here's a test of the 7K60, in an external firewire case.

http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/IDE/hitac...B_7200rpm.html

Here's a quote:

"I wish I had a spare Powerbook system (and the time) to compare them internally in a PowerBook (on the parallel IDE bus), especially since some readers seem concerned over possible heat issues with the 7200 rpm Travelstar model. However Hitachi has said this drive is designed for internal notebook use and other than a 10% higher powerup/spinup draw, the wattage used for read/write operations per their specs shows literally identical power consumption as previous 60GB/5400 rpm models"

Thanks for the useful information and link, amazing.