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O97Bassist · Dec 16, 2003, 07:45 PM

Its ordered, Today i finally made the actual order for my 'book, a 12" 800mhz ibook with 640mb and 60gig hard drive, shipping in two to three days! I hadven't been this excited since i got my drivers license... anyway after that string of useless information, The question... What is going to be the speed comparision of my now computer (733MHZ Pentium Celeron 128MB + 16MB video card) compared to my new 'book? THANKS! and on a side note i'm looking for some games to buy to play on the road...any suggestions?

ginoledesma · Dec 16, 2003, 07:58 PM

Congratulations! That's a nice setup you have for your iBook -- practically maxed out.

I don't have much experiences with recent PC laptops, but I have particular dislike for Celerons. I don't know if the desktop Celeron chips are better or worse than their laptop counterparts, but suffice it is for me to say that even my 1GHz Celeron PC at work is worthless. My Pentium III 733 is a way better machine.

The iBook should be a better performing Mac than the Celeron, though at games I think PCs (not necessarily your Celeron) may continue to hold their edge. The video chipset used by the iBook is one of the better ones out there (the best so far being the Radeon 9600s used by the high-end AlBooks).

What kind of games are you into? First Person Shooter? Adventure/RPG? Strategy?

You can download America's Army for free (do a search on MacUpdate or VersionTracker). Its a good strategy/FPS-type game. Other games worth looking into are Worms Blast, Age of Mythology, Warcraft III, Neverwinter Nights, Baldur's Gate, and so on.

Oh, there's MacMAME if you're into arcade games -- you just have to find the ROMs. It plays very well on my iBook G4/800.

O97Bassist · Dec 16, 2003, 08:13 PM

Thanks for the input! I'm really into first person shooters, racing games, and platformers. I want the games to run smooth so i was just wondering what games would be good to have to pass the time... and another question...
I'm thinking about buying a mouse to have while its sitting at home, what kind of mouse do you suggest?

Rev-O · Dec 16, 2003, 08:16 PM

Nice choice on the iBook! Congrats!

Check out Macskinz for some nice personalization of your iBook.

Games?
Must get Noiz2sa & rRootage for verical scrolling shooters. Awesome looking games, and only use arrow keys, so you can play it anywhere. Plus, both are free at
http://www.victoly.com/~adam

Age of mythology runs good and is a hoot, but too small for me on that 12" screen.

Of course your iBook comes with Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4, which is entertaining, but of course i have zero ability at it...

zewm · Dec 16, 2003, 08:49 PM

Congrats. I basically got the same thing as you except that I opted for the 14" 1Ghz (based on clock speed not screen size). Your ibook will come with Tony Hawk 4 and Deimos Rising (similar to 1942, raiden, galaga). Don't expect to have a portable gaming rig. I play quake on my ibook and it runs sub par. Tony Hawk also ran sort of choppy. I would stick with a desktop PC for gaming. Deimos rising was fun though, and it ran smoothly. Maybe I should lower the setting in quake a bit. Good luck with your new ibook.

*puts on flame protection suit*

Mrjinglesusa · Dec 18, 2003, 07:51 PM

Did you get the Bluetooth option on the iBook? If so, get the wireless Apple mouth - it's awesome. If not, I have a Kensington mouse with scroll wheel on my iMac that I really like.

ciphun · Dec 21, 2003, 03:55 PM

go with the logitech mx 700 mouse, eight buttons and it's wireless.

ginoledesma · Dec 21, 2003, 08:41 PM

I just played Neverwinter Nights on my iBook (and forgot that I had tons of CPU-hogging apps in the background). Gameplay was acceptable (even with the CPU-hogging apps), and it slightly improved when I rebooted and ran the game without any other apps.

I have yet to try out America's Army, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, and other similar games just for performance's sake because I'm not really into that kind of games.

The iBook G4/800, while a performer, will only be able to do so much for games, though. But I'm happy to note that even on the highest settings (maxed out), with only 256MB of RAM, I'm getting the performance that I could barely squeeze out of with older PowerMacs (G4/400, G4/500DP). I'm looking forward to having more RAM on my iBook.

m_young · Dec 24, 2003, 10:05 AM

I'm getting the exact same ibook tomorrow for christmas. I'm so excited. I hope the extra RAM makes a difference, because so far I've really only used the display iBook G4 at the retail store, with 256 mb, and the powerbooks we use at school for video class, which are also 256 mb. I'm so happy. Yay!