[Jawbone54]

I bought a 12-inch iBook a little over a year ago. It's the 1 ghz version. I never upgraded the RAM to 256, so the only money I put into it was an AirPort card.

I do some graphics work (slooow), and I've noticed things lag so badly. The hard drive (30 gb) is much too small, the memory MUST be upgraded, and I'm worried about how long I'm going to keep this thing...

Which brings me to this issue: my work is about to upgrade my aging desktop (PC, unfortunately), and I was wondering if you guys think that I would be better off to sell my iBook, take the money my office would be willing to put towards a new computer, and buy a new 15-inch Powerbook that I could use for both work and personal use.

Here's what I would be using a new computer for...
1. Everyday tasks in Microsoft Office
2. Tons of Photoshop work
3. Video editing (new area for me...nothing too serious, but I'd like to be using Final Cut Express)
4. Other graphics related material

One... Are the Powerbooks able to handle video editing?
Two... Will this last me for 2-3 years?
Three... Should I just keep the iBook, upgrade the RAM, and save up for an iMac or Power Mac?

In serious need of informed opinions...

[Mojo]

I think that your main problem is a lack of sufficient RAM. What made you think that 256MB would be enough? If you read many posts on this forum you will know that 256MB is barely enough memory to run 10.3, much less memory-intensive software such as Photoshop. At the present time your iBook is likely resorting to using virtual memory to meet your demands, which means a slow computer.

I don't think that a G4 Powerbook is going to be that much faster than your iBook. But if you added RAM (my 1GHZ iBook is maxed-out at 1.2GB) I think that you would see a marked improvement in speed. It would be the biggest bang for the buck. If that still isn't fast enough, then you are looking at a G5 Mac. I suggest checking out speed comparisons (reviews at MacWorld are one source) in order for you to gain a realistic appreciation for the real-world speed differences between the current Macs. Then you can make an informed decision about whether upgrading will provide enough improvement for your investment.

[Ozzpot]

Personally, I'd keep my personal and work affairs separate.

For a start you will encounter compatibilty issues. I work in an office where I have the only Mac. Everyone else has PCs. That's about 25 PCs and my G5 iMac. Although Mac OSX makes in increasingly easy to harmonize the two worlds, there are problems on a day to day basis. I am ALWAYS having trouble transferring files to my PC colleagues. Format, encryption, and compression issues for a start. I haven't been able to print for months, because all the printers are on a Windows network. At one point I could see 2 of them, and print to 1 of those 2, but now even that is broken.

Secondly, you really need a hell of a lot of RAM for video editing. Far more than could be squeezed into a Powerbook, so this is really not practical. I know a few people in that industry, and they have large dual monitor setups and at least 4gb RAM in thir machines. A portable ain't gonna cut it.

I would chuck some more RAM in your iBook and save up for something beefier. Maybe you could get a G5 iMac on finance? You'd run into RAM problems even if you maxed out one of those though I'd imagine, but they are very good value and have just been upgraded.

Hope this helps.

[Jawbone54]

Thanks for your replies, guys

I had read that 256 would be insufficient, but I kept delaying (I've checked Crucial about 20 times) because I wondered if I had made a mistake in purchasing an iBook in the first place. The RAM isn't as much of an issue to me right now. I'll be upgrading the RAM in the iBook for sure if I keep it. The problems are primarily
1. Hard drive space
2. Video editing
3. Longevity

As for video editing, I wouldn't be doing anything too serious on it. I work with youth, and the videos that I would be creating would be pretty simple stuff, and I wouldn't come close to touching HDV, although we do have a camera here that can record HDV. However, if you think that at last 4 GB of RAM is necessary for any video editing, you probably would know a lot better than I did, since it's still relatively new for me.

I've been reading every review for every bit of hardware that's come out since April of '04, so I'm very familiar with all the specs, but I just wanted to be absolutely sure as to what I was doing. Thanks again for the responses. Other out there agree?

[sworthy]

I use my powerbook for iMovie editing, and have had no problems at all. You certainly don't *need* 4GB's of RAM if that's all you are doing. You might want to post a topic over in the PB forum and ask if anyone does any higher level editing on their PB's.

[Mojo]

The easiest way to increase the drive space is to buy an external drive. Get one that you can boot from and you will have a number of advantages, particularly if you clone your iBook system to a partition on the external drive. You can also create a scratch partition that will be faster than using your iBook drive, plus you won't suffer the fragmentation that is likely occuring on your iBook (and which is probably another cause of your slooow performance.) Unless you created a separate scratch partition on your iBook, I would bet that your internal drive is seriously fragmented.

I think that you should stop worrying. From what you have described, it seems that iBook should serve you well, once you get a little more RAM inside it. And defrag the iBook drive...

[Mojo]

I'd like to add that on another forum a fellow claims to run PS just fine on 256MB total RAM. And yet I read over and over again that 256MB is the minimum for basic operations under OS X. I suppose this illustrates how everything is relative, at least when it comes to personal computing...

[yuanjuhn]

I have the same ibook, which I ran with only 256mb for about two months. It was fine for basic tasks such as email, webbrowsing, word processing but for viewing movies, the lack of memory was quite evident (dropped frames, occasional stuttering due to hard drive swapping like mad).

After putting in another 512mb, general performance increased---it multitasks more efficiently, video playback was nearly flawless and the hard drive didn't have to work as hard. It was like having a new computer.

I don't do video editing, so can't help you in that area. However, you should definitely upgrade to at least 512mb of memory to overcome this obvious bottleneck. If you desperately need more space, get an external firewire drive for the short term, or save up for a fast 7200rpm notebook drive. I do intend to keep my ibook for personal uses for at least two years, and for now, it looks as if I will be happy.

[Jawbone54]

Thanks a lot for all the responses. I've decided to max out the RAM, buy and external hard drive, and save up for a desktop, preferrably a Power Mac within the next year or so. I'm a poor college student and I'm getting married in December, so we may be looking at 2 years, but that's not really....that...long.............

[Ozzpot]

Ask all the guests at your wedding to give you cash or Apple store coupons instead of toasters and sh!t.

[Randman]

You do graphics work on an iBook with only 256 of ram. That's like a brain surgeon doing an operation with a spoon!

[Jawbone54]

Ah, Randman...

Now you see why I use the word "dilemma" instead of "complication."

[storer]

Hrmn well, I say, update the RAM in your iBook to at least 512MB, because you said you aren't doing HUGE amounts of graphic work. That should at least pull you through. I've tried to do graphics on 256MB on an eMac before... it went OK but a boost to 512 was welcomed.

Your iBook is still a perfectly capable machine, it's just under-rammed. Apple needs to start doing something about it, due to the nature of most of their users. Anyways... I say keep iBook, add RAM. Get your new work PC.