[Conor Dearden]

Fellow Mac users that know it all,

I was wondering what the gain would be of upgrading to the 128 card? Will it make a difference? Is it worth the 50 bucks? Will it deplete my battery faster and heat up my powerbook? As a side note an answer to the last two questions regarding the 5400rpm drive too, would be appreciated. I want to be more informed before buying a new powerbook?

[James L]

If you game or monitor span it will definitely help. If you do any hard drive intensive tasks the faster hard drive will help.

The other thing to think about is that because laptops aren't upgradable you should always "future proof" them when you buy them as much as possible. An extra $100 to get double the video ram and a faster hard drive will only extend the life of your machine, plus increase the resell value down the road.

Cheers!

James

[JHromadka]

I know we're (mostly) excited about the new PowerBooks, but look for threads before starting a new topic.

[EdipisReks]

to me, the extra vram is a no brainer at that price.

[Lateralus]

Worth the $50.

And an increase in VRAM would have as much of a detrimental effect on your PowerBook as additional RAM: None.

[onaujee]

i agree, these upgrades are a no-brainer. for $100, it makes waaay better.

[Powerbook]

Re: "futureproof"
Since the bus, cpu speed etc etc. do not grow with [this] update, I don't think this actually increases the machines usability time.
Also - what about more heat, lesser battery time...?
Of course I have to agree, the price is nice.

PB.

[James L]

Originally posted by Powerbook:
Re: "futureproof"
Since the bus, cpu speed etc etc. do not grow with [this] update, I don't think this actually increases the machines usability time.
Also - what about more heat, lesser battery time...?
Of course I have to agree, the price is nice.

PB.

I disagree,

I am currently typing this on my old iBook G3 600mhz machine. I run a web design business off this laptop, and for about 4 hours a day I run Photoshop, Flash, BBEdit, about 6 browsers, iMovie, and iPhoto, etc.

BUT, it only has a 20GB harddrive and 8, count 'em, 8 mb of video ram.

So, where my machine is completely dependable for my day to day tasks, I long ago started running out of hard drive space and, more importantly, have not been able to play any decent games on it for a long time.

1.5Ghz is a decent processor speed. Heavy duty graphic apps (3D games, Maya, etc) will require more video ram long before they require more processor speed.

For the price, maxing out your ram, vram, and hard drive gives your machine those extra legs to stand on a couple of years from now.

Cheers!

James

[Conor Dearden]

You have all cleared it up for me, if I can squeeze out an extra year out of the computer down the road, because of the upgrades, then it's worth the money. I can hold out for the G6, in 4 years, when apple makes us wait for that one to.