[Lateralus]

Sonnet Site

Sleek. Sexy. Powerful. Just a few of the words used to describe the lust factor of the Titanium PowerBook® G4 ("TiBook"). Your 550 or 667 (VGA) TiBook may still be sleek and sexy, but powerful, well…at least iTunes® doesn't seem to have a problem—yet. With each upgrade of Mac OS® X and your favorite applications, your TiBook seems to run just a tad bit slower. You've been holding out for the mythical PowerBook G5, but why wait when you can upgrade your current TiBook 550 or 667 (VGA) now with Sonnet's PowerBook Upgrade Service—power up to a G4 processor running at 1.2 GHz at the fraction of the cost of purchasing a new PowerBook.

Not bad for $499 including shipping I think.

I for one never thought we would see any form of processor upgrade for any of the PowerBook G4s. Glad to see Sonnet is commited though. Hopefully this is a glimpse of what's to come for later model PowerBooks and maybe even iBooks.

[Eug Wanker]

Not bad. Mind you I'd probably just sell the TiBook and buy a new AluBook, although that'd probably cost something like $1000 extra instead of $500 extra. But you get a much faster CPU, USB 2, Airport Extreme, a super-fast GPU that supported Core Image, etc.

Perhaps Sonnet is also counting on the guys who want to boot OS 9, since even now it seems like a desired feature for a few users. I just sold my TiBook, and people specifically wanted to know if it was Ti or not, and I suspect it was for this reason. (BTW, I ended up buying an iBook instead though, instead of the AluBook.) One thing that makes me wonder though is the fact that it's a 1.2 GHz with 512 KB L2, which makes it either a 7447 or a 7447A. The 7447A is harder to support in OS 9 than OS X. It's even problematic in OS X, since a late version of 10.3 is required. They claim there are no compatibility issues however.

So, is the VGA TiBook's G4 550/667 on a daughtercard? They specifically state the DVI TiBooks are not supported with this upgrade.

[Voch]

I think it's pretty nifty. I'm still cool with my 667, though (it's DVI, too).

Voch

[freebasen]

One thing that they do not mention on their site is Battery life. I would be interested to see what kind of effect this CPU has on that. Also I wonder why they chose the model that they did.

[Lateralus]

I figure the reasons they went for the 550/667 crowd are;

1) The 400/500 owners are probably going to upgrade to newer PowerBooks if only because of the fact that it is getting increasingly constraining to run OS X without a video card that supports Quartz Extreme.

2) Sonnet probably figures that owners of TiBooks faster than 667MHz will not see upgrading to 1.2GHz as providing enough of a benefit to shell out $500 to do it.

So, I'm thinking Sonnet is kinda doing this as a test. If it goes well, I imagine we'll see faster versions of the G4 available for more revisions of the PowerBook. Keep in mind that Freescale is getting ready to let the 7448 G4 roll at speeds at or around 1.8GHz, and it's pin compatible with the rest of the 744x family. And with double the L2 cache of any G4 ever shipped, it will provide a very nice speed boost to anybody upgrading to it.

[euphras]

Thanks for the info Lateralus! But why don´t they support the DVI ones? What is the difference between the VGAs and the DVIs?

(have a 667 DVI, would be very interested in upgrading the machine since i still prefer the look and feel of the Ti´s over the successors)

[Lateralus]

If I had to guess on that, I'd say that they only want to support one revision for simplicity's sake. I doubt there is any architectural reason why the upgrade couldn't be done to the DVI models. From Sonnet's perspective, they probably figure that if they offered the upgrade for the 667 DVIs people would complain about not offering it for the 800 DVI, which brings me back to point 2 above.

I'd fire off an e-mail to Sonnet if you're genuinely interested in the upgrade for a DVI model. Given the fact that there is probably no procedural difference on their end in doing the upgrade, they may agree to do it on a request basis.

[euphras]

I did so. Will post the response when i get it

[euphras]

Ok, got the response yesterday (approved to be posted in this thread):

The 2nd generation model (550/667 MHz) was the first footprint that
was compatible with the PPC 7457 G4 chip that we are using for this
upgrade. Later models should be compatible, but more research is
needed as well as successful sales on this TiBook upgrade. So there's
nothing in the works yet, but don't rule out the possibility of an
upgrade in the future.

[euphras]

*bump*

[Lateralus]

1.92GHz AlBook upgrade.

Wow.

[mduell]

Originally Posted by Lateralus

1.92GHz AlBook upgrade.

Wow.

Battery life measured in nanoseconds!

[Philip J. Fry]

Originally Posted by Lateralus

1.92GHz AlBook upgrade.

Wow.

Finally, a reason to keep my 15" around longer

[crouchingtiger]

really, all of this means very little until we see a price...

[discotronic]

Originally Posted by Lateralus

1.92GHz AlBook upgrade.

Wow.

I don't see your reasoning to lock the other tread that was going. This thread is about a different upgrade. The Daystar 1.92 thread should have been kept open. How are people supposed to discuss something if you decide that your thread is so most important that you should bump a dead for 2 months thread and close the rest?

Why consolidate two threads when they are discussing two different items?

[mrmister]

Bad call, Lateralus.

[fisherKing]

Originally Posted by discotronic

I don't see your reasoning to lock the other tread that was going. This thread is about a different upgrade. The Daystar 1.92 thread should have been kept open. How are people supposed to discuss something if you decide that your thread is so most important that you should bump a dead for 2 months thread and close the rest?

Why consolidate two threads when they are discussing two different items?

hey...thanks.
thought i had posted something new after all...

[mrmister]

Maybe you could at least change the thread title, Lateralus?

[Lateralus]

Fair enough.

I had only locked the other thread because I had bumped this one before it was created.

I've reopened it.