[schalliol]

My brother, a PC user, is looking at laptops and I have asked him to consider the PowerBook G4. That said, he wishes to see some performance comparisions that will be meaningful. As he is going to get something very soon. Any input you have ASAP would be greatly appreciated!

[caseygittings]

Gett'in a Dell

[schalliol]

What? He should get a Dell? I'm asking for performance specs. Do you have any Dell vs. PowerBook G4 specs?

[phobos]

These are some tests I did some while ago. It tests the 667DVI with some DESKTOP pc's. The results are very good and the newer powerbooks will perform much better. So if you compare it with pc laptops the powerbooks will perform even better. The tests are mainly photoshop tests cause that's the program I use day in day out. What's your brothers main programs?

Anyway here are the tests.
--------------------------------
Yesterday I have done a very simple test with a friend of mine who owns an XP1800.The tests were simple and weren't based on real life situations but they show a very good performance for the G4's.If my powerbook can perform that well than the dual G4's on the powermac can really outperform the current intel and athlon chips.

MP3 encoding. The cd was written on the hard disk and then encoded on mp3 format.It's not what you do in real life but in this way we excluded the slow combo drive that I knew I had and concentrated on the real power of the encoding.Mp3's encoded at 192.
Athlon 7:55
Powerbook: 7:50

Then we have done a photoshop test.We are going to repeat the tests with some real life actions and see what comes up.We know made a lot of filter tests that we both don't use at all but at this time we were on a hurry.Both systems have 512MB memory.I remind you that Athlon has also the faster DDR memory.Athlon uses a 7200rpm disk as scratch and powerbook also uses external 7200rpm disk as scratch.
Convert image from 72 dpi to a 300dpi image and at an additional resolution of 5000pixels width.

Image size:
Athlon: 5"
Powerbook: 6"

Free Transform
Athlon: 1: 27
Powerbook: 1: 22

Convert RGB to CMYK
Athlon: 18"
Powerbook: 29"

Unsharp Mask
Athlon: 1: 39
Powerbook: 1:28

Mosaic
Athlon: 42"
Powerbook: 59

Sumi-E (A filter that I have used for the first time in my life....)
Athlon: 55"
Powerbook: 3minutes 27seconds (!!!!!!)

Powerbook won in 2 out of 6 tests on the photoshop tests we did and scored quite close to the athlon on the rest of the tests except the SumiE filter where we saw a near 4x faster times on the athlon.

Then we did a cinebench test where athlon clearly outperformed the powerbook.(Graphic card used on the athlon Ati radeon 9000 something.Sorry I can't remember now the exact number.I'll post it later)



Shading Cinema4d
Athlon 13.15 Powerbook 5,88

Shading Open Gl
Athlon 27 Powerbook 7,59

Raytracing
Athlon 20.88 Powerbook 8,30

I think that the humble 667 powerbook performed quite well.And I might add that photoshop in 10.2 is slower than in 10.1.5 ... So the photoshop tests could be a lot better if photoshop was properly written for the os.
I think this is impressive stuff here.
So to every one out there who are whining about mac being outperformed by intel and athlon read this and be happy...
I can't find a reason why a dual800 powermac with the same graphic card as the athlon wouldn't outperform it!!!! Of course I'm talking about the 2(MP3 encoding and photoshop test) out of 3 tests. Athlon would certainly outperform the powermac on the 3d department but not with that many points.











Did some tests today with a friend of mine.
Machine tested. Dual Pentium 3 933MHz. Everyone agrees that pentium 3 is much more efficient than pentium 4 .It's not me saying it everyboy says it.
So the machine is
Dual pentium 3 933MHz
512MB memory 133MHz
7200rpm 80Gb hard disk.
GForce3 64MB
Windows XP
90% of the memory devoted to photoshop.
1024X768 resolution

My machine Powerbook DVI 667MHz with 512MB of ram
70% of memory devoted to photoshop
4200rpm 30gb hard disk and 40gb external firewire hard disk and scratch disk
LCD monitor running on 1280X854 and second CRT monitor running at 1024X768 both at millions of colors.

The results are very interesting. The powerbook beat the pentium machine by 10seconds.... And I have to say that the powerbook was driving double and over the resolution of the pc machine.All the tests were driven by the pc friend of mine so no one can tell me that I used filters and actions that was better on the mac side.And also you may notice that many of the actions that the pc is beating the mac are mainly disk intensive and of course the pc beat it hands on.(7200 rpm vs 4200 rpm disk)

Here are the results:

Picture opened. Flower.psd (on the sample files of the photoshop folder)

Open file
PC: 0,3 Mac 1,3
Image size
4,1 vs 6,1
Rotate
5,2 vs 8,2
Rotate canvas
24,4 vs 3,2
Flatten Image
18 vs 3,9
Convert to Cmyk
3,6 vs 7,8
Gaussian Blur
4,2 vs 2,5
Unsharp Mask
4,2 vs 3,1
Mosaic 27,4 vs 28,2
Fresco
31,4 vs 29,7
Radial Blur
28,9 vs 38,5
Hue Saturation
1,4 vs 1
Free transform
4,7 vs 4,7
Crop
0,2 vs 3,1
and one more test that I've forgot to write down...
4,9 vs 11

PC won 8 tests Mac 6 and 1 draw.
---------------------------

Hope this helps.

[DVD Plaza]

Bah, when will a Mac vs PC debate ever just drop the friggen PhotoShop comparisons? Does everyone do their wordprocessing and e-mail in PhotoShop or something?

Overall the Mac will be slower - a real world job like a search & replace on a 100 page document takes forever on a Mac, but on a PC will take mere seconds (the first time, after that the same search will get slower and slower).

The fact is, however, that overall a Mac is also easier and more intuitive to use - and as a switcher myself I can also tell you that, as strange as it sounds, it is also more fun to use.

So in my opinion the Mac wins hands down - but whether you can PhotoShop an archid nanospoonal polygonal spasm in .1 seconds faster than a PC is meaningless unless you are doing hardcore graphics work as career.

And yes I do a lot of Illustrator and PhotoShop work, but the split second differences that are claimed as being the reason one should use a Mac had nothing to do with convincing me - OSX itself and the PowerBook design are what attracted me.

Just me two cents

(Written on a PowerBook without using PhotoShop )

[schalliol]

phobos: Thank you so much for the incredibly detailed info!

He actually DOES spend a lot of time in Photoshop. I don't want to get this thread off topic, but it seems to me that find and replace on a 100 page document is a much less used process than editing in Photoshop.

Dave (my bro) is currently a Ph.D. student at the Univ. of Chicago, does some web designing on the side, and uses the following apps a lot:
Photoshop
Word
Illustrator
Games (3D though he hasn't had time to play much and perhaps he will continue to on the PC)

These numbers do indicate positive things. I suppose if anyone has other specs, they would be awesome to see! I think the hook is in, now just have to reel it in. I know he'd love it if he had one.

[DVD Plaza]

Originally posted by schalliol:
I don't want to get this thread off topic, but it seems to me that find and replace on a 100 page document is a much less used process than editing in Photoshop.

My point was merely that doing ANYTHING other than graphics work, ie Word/Excel/Entourage/Web Browsing/Networking/Operating System Itself/Games/etc will perform slower on a Mac than on a PC - in some cases a hell of a lot slower The search & replace on a 100 page document was nothing more than an example - drag files over an SMB connection, search and replace a few thousand references within a document, apply a new formula to a few thousand cells in a spreadsheet, browse through a few thousand e-mails, browse the Internet, etc - they'll all take 10-15 seconds LONGER than a PC would. These are massive significant differences that affect everyday computing.

Step into PhotoShop and suddenly save 0.1 seconds here, 0.5 seconds there, 2 seconds on that, and yes minutes on this, etc...

I say nothing more than PhotoShop is totally and utterly overused as an example since it has been designed from the ground up to make use of the Mac's brilliant advantage when it comes to graphics work.

This is NOT, however, critism against the Mac. REAL WORLD performance may be slow compared to a PC, when you forget the "but PhotoShop is faster if you do *this*, won't mentin it's slower if you do *that*" comparisons, HOWEVER I also make it clear that not only am I not bias and DO use both PhotoShop and Illustrator quite extensively but overall the Mac is faster due to being a more productive and intuitive work environment.

I cringe when I have to step to my PC and find it does what I was doing on my Mac far far far far quicker, BUT at the same time I used to spend forever keeping my PC working and/or having to tolerate PC crap all the time instead of actually getting work done - I do that as a full time job (PC administration/support) and was sick to death of having to do it at home as well when I just need to "get work done"... with my PowerBook I do just that, I simply turn her on and get work done without any crap what-so-ever and get far far far far far far far far far more done as a result, and ENJOY it... imagine, given my career is spent supporting the hell computers cause, that I no longer have to tolerate that sh#t at home.

I run a business from home - so this saving means money, it means time, and it means less stress.

I simply mention that if you want performance figures, you'll basically only get it from PhotoShop comparisons (ie don't get a Mac thinking they perform fast as hell because of PhotoShop figures, and be disappointed when you find everything else is dog slow). You really do need to bear in mind the massive non-statistical gains from using a Mac.

That said, using the right software can also make a big difference (ie using Chimera instead of Internet Exploder for web browsing yields a MASSIVE MASSIVE difference in speed), etc.

In your case PhotoShop is all that matters anyways so I guess I've wasted my time (your original post never made mention of this, hence why I thought my opinion might be valued). Guess in this case if I was using a PC I would have spent 0 minutes on this matter, but on my Mac I've wasted half an hour (ie trying to help a fellow Mac user). Mac looses out big time on this one, might as well have wasted an extra few seconds on PhotoShop for Windows

[schalliol]

You think your PC is faster than your Mac in general (and it's not a processor thing)? Where do you get that? I understand the comment you bring up about find and replace, one task, but i see no reason to believe that my 733 is slower than the 933 Dell I had at work. The 733 is clearly faster in nearly everything I did on the PC. And I used both machines lots. The only thing is the lack of true full keyboard access on the mac in relation to usable speed.

Do you have any examples relating to a PowerBook and a PC laptop? That's what I'm looking for. The debate about performance of Macs vs. PCs is old and not what is discussed here, but if the machine is slower than another, in many tasks (record them) then that's an issue.

[schalliol]

Clearly overall functionality is important, so time something for me so we can compare. You haven't wasted your time, but I have no clue where you're getting this difference between the platforms on speed outside of Photoshop. I don't see it, other people don't seem to see it. He didn't time it because it's considered a non-issue by people in general. In many cases the interface is much more intuitive and allows less things to be done to accomplish a task, so that would even prove it faster.

[Commodus]

Check out this InfoWorld article on the Powerbook. They really seem to like it, and according to them the performance when actually being used as intended (i.e. away from a power cable) is supposed to be better than for a P4-based laptop.

They don't mention it in that article, but I've seen people at the Ars Technica forums state that their P4-M laptops throttle back as much as 50% (from 2.0 GHz to 1.0 GHz; I've also heard 1.2 GHz cited) the very moment they're running on batteries. You can disable that speed adjustment, but then you also lose out on 20-30 minutes of battery life. Not that there was a whole lot of battery life on those laptops (I've heard between 2 and 2.5 hours) to begin with.

So the Powerbook might be better as an actual laptop, though you've seen that it's actually pretty decent for what your brother wants to do when it IS plugged in. One thing, though: for now, not a laptop on the planet (not even one of those Alienware laptops with a non-mobile 3.06 GHz Pentium 4) will really survive as a gaming system. It's better to keep a desktop around for that and to use a laptop for things like wireless Internet access, music, or even - gasp - work.

[DVD Plaza]

Originally posted by schalliol:
You think your PC is faster than your Mac in general (and it's not a processor thing)? Where do you get that?

I already said - Wordprocessing, spreadsheets, mail, browsing, network access, general operating system use, etc?

Originally posted by schalliol:
I understand the comment you bring up about find and replace, one task

What I also said was "drag files over an SMB connection, search and replace a few thousand references within a document, apply a new formula to a few thousand cells in a spreadsheet, browse through a few thousand e-mails, browse the Internet, etc - they'll all take 10-15 seconds LONGER than a PC would. These are massive significant differences that affect everyday computing."

Originally posted by schalliol:
if the machine is slower than another, in many tasks (record them) then that's an issue.

And I already mentioned a few day-to-day tasks I do that takes my Mac 10-15 seconds longer than my PC. Just a few things off the top of my head, no doubt plenty more (favouring either side) if tests were done. I ain't going to compile complete statistics, it's nearly midnight on a Saturday night here, I merely was offering some feedback on your question.

Originally posted by schalliol:
I have no clue where you're getting this difference between the platforms on speed outside of Photoshop. I don't see it, other people don't seem to see it.

How can you have no clue? I gave a few specific examples of day-to-day tasks. Not sure how others "don't seem to see it", last I knew everyone acknowledges Macs are slower at general tasks, just that when asked which is faster PhotoShop statistics are suddenly used to claim the Mac is faster.

Originally posted by schalliol:
In many cases the interface is much more intuitive and allows less things to be done to accomplish a task, so that would even prove it faster.

I already said that in both my posts.

I think you've only read 10% of what I've written. In any case I was just offering some basic feedback - you asked for some meaningful performance differences and I thought it might be more "meaningful" if more than PhotoShop was taken into consideration. As I said, you don't want to go claiming the Mac is faster if he saves 2 seconds on PhotoShop work but waits 15 seconds longer for tasks in Word/Excel - but to also bear in mind that whilst tasks like that might perform slower, the overall experience with the Mac will be far more efficient and productive and far outway the performance difference.

Not to mention that if you forget performance then a PowerBook kicks a PCs butt in terms of widescreen benefits, far brighter screen, dead silent (except for the odd noisy PowerBook with the new model), 3-4 hours of REALISTIC battery life (compared to barely over an hour with REALISTIC load on a PC notebook), absolutely thin yet strong beast (compared to chunky yet breakable plastic PC notebooks), etc. But also works the other way round, keyboard is less functional than a PC and the single mouse button is a pain in the #### (frankly using CTRL+click is rediculous, not to mention goes against Apple's claim years back that the mouse allows you to use a computer with one hand), etc. However none of this is performance comparisons.

I tell you one thing though - MINUTES are saved every single time you use a PowerBook by simply opening the machine and having OSX immediately and instantly awake from sleep and ready for use. No bootup you would experience with either a Mac or PC, and no delay/problems you experience with awaking a PC.

[wallinbl]

Originally posted by Commodus:

They don't mention it in that article, but I've seen people at the Ars Technica forums state that their P4-M laptops throttle back as much as 50% (from 2.0 GHz to 1.0 GHz; I've also heard 1.2 GHz cited) the very moment they're running on batteries. You can disable that speed adjustment, but then you also lose out on 20-30 minutes of battery life. Not that there was a whole lot of battery life on those laptops (I've heard between 2 and 2.5 hours) to begin with.

They've been scaling down CPU speed on battery mode since the P3 hit laptops. I have a P3-650 at work, and it slows down when on battery (unless you remove SpeedStep). With SpeedStep turned off, I can get about 1:40 to 2:10 from the battery. That is while doing programming (typing, compiling, running). No CD/DVD activity at all. That's really pretty weak for a 9lb laptop that is almost 2" thick.

[issa]

schalliol, my unsolicited recommendation it to simply assure your brother that the PowerBook will satisfy his every need, will deliver more than adequate speed and pleasure, and that he's guaranteed to thank you later. If you feel it necessary to add web-published reference, you can always direct him to Tom Yager's review, "PC killer on the loose" while pointing out that Tom has never been a Mac fan and the review appears on a site sponsored by Wintel companies the likes of HP, IBM, etc. If that's not enough to catch his interest, he's not worth the trouble!

Signed, a satisfied PowerBook user who does CONTROL + click and most mouse (actually trackpad) actions with one hand.

P.S. I just finished working on a TV commercial for the latest do-it-all notebook computer from one of Japan's leading makers. Big, heavy and the maker's stated battery life per charge is "up to 1.6 hours"! What a joke.

[ngrundy]

well I switched from a dual p3 866 desktop to a 1ghz powerbook about 4 weeks ago. I can say hands down i don't miss the PC one iota.

I personaly find the mac more intuitive to use, more plesent to use both visualy and work flow wise.

SMB/AFP/NFS file share access all *feel* as fast as a windows copy. The big difference is that i no longer have to wait 73431294 minuites for 4.5GB of data to copy over the network. anyone who has done large data transfers on a windows machine will reconise the problem there. OSX is actualy able to give a working estimate on data copy times(!)

for games, i get ~90fps in q3a, ~70 fps in return to the castle of wolf, and about 70-80 in ghost recon: desert strike. these are the only games I've tried so far I'm not much of a games person myself.

I use my powerbook for taking a lot of notes in lectures at uni, I'm able to get a *full day* out of one battery charge. or about 4-5 hours of lectures.

on a software usage note I actualy find myself using the iApps, I didn't realise how much sence the entire digital hub concept made until i actualy started using the apps, now i want a blue tooth mobile :/

My suggestion (from the perspective of a switcher) if you are going to get any mac is to break out the install DVD and blow away the hdd, install a fresh install of OSX, get rid of any sign of OS9 it's dead, let it be.

Physicaly the powerbook doesn't feel like it's going to break, i can pick it up and hand it to someone without feeling the frame bend or hearing the sound of plastic bending and distorting. The LCD in my laptop is brighter and more vibrant than the 17" CRT's I used to own. My bedroom is on the side of the house that gets the morning sun, if i wanted to use my old x86 system i'd need to keep the blinds shut intil 11am so i could see the CRT, i can now have my blinds open as of 8am and use the laptop and still see a bright image without squinting.

My own personal option is that people have got so caught up in the speed of computers and forget that how many billions of operations a second a machine can do isn't the only factor. if it was then we'd all own cray X1 super-computers! I've used SMP based x86 systems since 1999 in an effort to get stability and responsiveness under high loads. A single cpu x86 system really feels sluggish to me when it's cpu starts to get a good workout. the powerbook seems to be able to handle doing the hard yards without blinking.

I think I've come to an inner realisation that I want a computer that "just works", one that I don't need to fight with every 30 minuites or have to reinstall every other month due to cruft and outdated DLL's. Being a unix type of guy at heart I want the stability that my FreeBSD servers give me. The responsiveness that they deliver under load. An interface that makes sence, flows well and is actualy a pleasure to look at and use. and of course applications. I've got office, anti virus, mp3 and video media players, cd burning, calandering, image management, the list goes on.

[Commodus]

wallinbl:

Wow, that's pretty bad - and P3-M laptops are supposed to be more power-efficient than P4 models! I've heard that a Powerbook can get considerably more life even when it's under heavy use, let alone in a circumstance like mine (when I would only need the battery while typing up notes).

[Eug]

Depends on what he wants to do. On average the TiBook WILL be a bit slower, BUT:

The TiBook has:

Power Firewire
DVI output
15" screen but it's only 5.4 lbs
Gigabit Ethernet (who cares)
DVD burner (slot load if you care)

I think overall, the TiBook has no match in the world, despite the fact on some apps it will be slower.

[Thinine]

Any and all performance problems relating to Office v.X (and there are a few) and nearly all Microsoft's fault. They could be continually updating the software but instead seem content to do nothing about the problems. Also, you must remember that in Windows, Office is nearly part of the OS and comes with all the speed that brings. Same with IE.

However, I feel that your brother will appreciate OS X's multitasking ability so he can do other things while he burns a CD or wait for that Excel worksheet to compute.

[mrtew]

My TiGz with Jaguar seems much faster than the new Dual P4 tower I use at work. Not stats but it just feels faster. I spend a lot of time waiting for the HP to do god knows what all day, and my Mac does everything right NOW!

[issa]

Yep, the M$ Office apps will always have a speed advantage running under that same company's operating system. Here's a company that can't even achieve full compatibility between two language versions of its office suite programs under the *same* platform let alone achieve cross-platform compatibility. For example, the layout of a presentation prepared in the Japanese version of PowerPoint will appear different in the English version on most occasions, even within the Windows environment. And people wonder why the same company can't get tens of millions of lines of code half right in the operating system that's like a submarine that features screen door security. SPeaking of which, your brother may also be interested to hear about the relative safety of surfing the 'net with getting cooties if he uses a PowerBook and avoids M$ mail apps or browsers.

I suddenly hear Bob Dylan in the background...

How many gigaflops
Does a young man need
Before he gets his work done.

How many nanoseconds
Must a benchmark reduce
Before the battle is won.

Yes, and how many apples and oranges
Must we line up together
Before the interface differences can be seen.

The answer my friend
Is the PowerBook rules supreme,
The answer is blowin' in the wind-oze.

[photoeditor]

In some respects it's a good thing simply to compare machines by trying them out -- go with your gut. You'll find that so much depends on software. For me, the latest 10.2.3 system upgrade produces a big increase in starting up Classic, the old operating system environment; on the Powerbook, opening Word 2001 in Classic, without classic already running, takes me less than 25 seconds on a first attempt (this is the equivalent of a full system boot AND opening the application) and if Classic is already running and I open word, it is almost instant.

Where the Mac suffers most visibly is in web browsing. Internet Explorer and Netscape are simply slow on the Mac, especially Netscape; and the browser destined to fix this, Chimera, is still in beta (though it is pretty impressively stable for a beta). And Microsoft's tendency towards turning its OS into a great big browser means that developing IE for the Mac turns into a distinct, labor intensive task because they can no longer port a standalone application if it doesn't exist.

I'd also like someone more knowledgeable than I am to shed some light on multitasking, especially in OSX. Recent Macs -- the MDD PowerMacs and the 867/1GHz PowerBooks have shown huge increases in their ability to multitask without slowing down on benchmarks I've seen; much bigger than you would expect given the slow ramp up in processor speed. I'm thinking that there are both I/O improvements and software improvements at work in the MDD PowerMacs, despite the tepid implementation of DDR RAM; whereas the PowerBook, I suspect, but I would love to know, depends on software. I'm not sure if there's a PC laptop available with that kind of multitasking performance as seen in MacSpeedZone's latest review of the PowerBook; as for the PowerMac, much more widely documented, its multitasking is very strong indeed, to the point that only the 3GHz P4 with multithreading can beat it in a significant range of tests.

Speed apart, the Mac system is also extremely stable in multitasking. Running iTunes, a download in Internet Exploder, and M$ Office at the same time; even throwing a big Photoshop file into the mix, is not a problem on the Mac -- even if some of the individual applications may seem slow to a PC user they don't crash and they don't slow down significantly when they're all on at once. I don't know about Windows XP having not used it, but every previous Windows version seems to me to have been a one-task-at-a-time-or-else kind of enterprise.

[PoisonTooth]

Not to be overly vague, but most has been said already. My bottom line: Apple's laptops are second to none. Yes, you could argue desktops until you're dead, but for laptops, it's nearly impossible to beat the TiBook.

I have two machines: a PB 1Ghz with 1GB RAM, and a p4 2.4Ghz desktop which I hand-built as a gaming/graphics rig. Guess which machine I use 90% of the time?

Yep, the Mac. The PC gets game duty, and that's about it.

BTW, 10.2.3 rules.

[TheIceMan]

Originally posted by schalliol:
My brother, a PC user, is looking at laptops and I have asked him to consider the PowerBook G4. That said, he wishes to see some performance comparisions that will be meaningful.

Ok, here's some numbers from MacSpeedZone. It compares the 867Mhz (I know it's NOT the 1GHz) PowerBook to previous PowerBook, iBook, and Power Mac models. Check it out here:
http://macspeedzone.com/html/hardwar...ok/index.shtml

[John123]

You people who say that your PowerBooks are smoking your Pentiums are smoking something yourselves...

My P4 machine is hands-down faster than my PowerBook. I have bought PowerBooks and love them not for speed but for their simplicity. If raw speed is the be-all end-all for you, then a PC is the better platform (Photoshop notwithstanding). If you would like style, simple functionality, and speed that is more than satisfactory, go with the Mac.

[Atef's corpse]

high-end P4 laptops are gonna give you either one or all of the following:
60-90 min. battery life
Searing temperatures
ugly, virus-ridden Windows
10 lbs to lug around.

[cambro]

Originally posted by John123:
You people who say that your PowerBooks are smoking your Pentiums are smoking something yourselves...
My P4 machine is hands-down faster than my PowerBook. I have bought PowerBooks and love them not for speed but for their simplicity. If raw speed is the be-all end-all for you, then a PC is the better platform (Photoshop notwithstanding). If you would like style, simple functionality, and speed that is more than satisfactory, go with the Mac.

I don't think there is much point getting into this now, but raw speed in the PPC platform depends on what you are doing.

Writing your own code to do data processing? Then, I'm sorry, if you include altivec instructions in your code then you will have to get the top-of-the-line Pentium desktop to match performance of that code. Simple as that. If you are doing things like browsing web pages, sure, a slower Pentium chip will out perform the PPC in a PB because of the all too well known integration of Explorer in the Windows opsys. Personally, Chimera loading a page in 3.1 seconds is just as good as Win. Expl. loading in 2.8. So, smoking things or not, speed, as always, is subjective and at the very least depends on what you are doing. For myself, 4hrs of solid battery life, a killer screen, slot loading DVD/CD burner and altivec are speed and features enough for me and probably for most users out there. Throw OS X into the mix and, well, the choice is obvious to me.

[John123]

Originally posted by cambro:

I don't think there is much point getting into this now, but raw speed in the PPC platform depends on what you are doing.

Writing your own code to do data processing? Then, I'm sorry, if you include altivec instructions in your code then you will have to get the top-of-the-line Pentium desktop to match performance of that code. Simple as that. If you are doing things like browsing web pages, sure, a slower Pentium chip will out perform the PPC in a PB because of the all too well known integration of Explorer in the Windows opsys. Personally, Chimera loading a page in 3.1 seconds is just as good as Win. Expl. loading in 2.8. So, smoking things or not, speed, as always, is subjective and at the very least depends on what you are doing. For myself, 4hrs of solid battery life, a killer screen, slot loading DVD/CD burner and altivec are speed and features enough for me and probably for most users out there. Throw OS X into the mix and, well, the choice is obvious to me.

I realize that the topic is an old one, but I *do* think there is a point in doing this...namely, because the dude starting the thread was interested in performance comparisons. I'm not trying to extol the virtues of either Macs or PCs...but I use a PC at work (and I use it correctly and know a lot about it) and am typing on a 1Ghz PB right now (and I use it, too, correctly and know a lot about it), so I think that compared to a lot of folks, I can make some meaningful and pretty unbiased comparisons.

Some thoughts:
(1) You are right about writing your own code using AltiVec. I did this a few years ago with a program I needed. Very nice. I have no idea what the PC equivalent would be.
(2) Most folks, however, use their programs off-the-shelf. And most programs off-the-shelf are faster on my (desktop) PC than my Mac. Photoshop is an obvious exception. Chimera on my Mac is a bit slower than IE on my PC. Any Microsoft app is a lot faster on my PC.
(3) For now, OS 9 is faster than OS X and not by a tiny margin, either. That might impact this fellow's brother's decision.
(4) My battery life ain't 4 hours...it's 3 and some change. It's always been 3ish on every PowerBook I've owned (4 of 'em) in the last three years. Still not bad though.

[phobos]

Hello john123.
This thing is very tiresome. What exactly you don't believe?
That my powerbook beats a double pentium 3? Well I can't do anything about it. Get over it...
And I'm not smoking anything. So if you have anything more wise to say than say it. Just don't use these kind of arguments. O.k ?
And if you bothered to see the other benchmarks then you would have seen that compared to an athlon the powerbook has lost . But the results were very good on the powerbook side.

I don't know what forces your desbelief. I don't care what platform you think is better or not but when you're disputing my tests and my arguments you insult me beyond belief....

Of course your pentium 4 will be faster than your powerbook. It's not anything new. If someone uses applications that are better optimized for a PC than use a PC. But PLEASE pepople don't say that everything else except photoshop is dog slow on the mac side. This is just plain stupid.

[issa]

Let's go back to where the thread started and keep in mind that schalliol's brother is looking for comparisons between *laptop* computers. John123, if you feel so compelled, maybe you want to share your experience with a Wintel *laptop* vs. the PowerBook. Most of the posts in this thread, many written by folks who have used laptops of different flavors, make no attempt to say that the PowerBook will be significantly faster in raw speed when compared to a Wintel *laptop*. The point is rather that performance will be more than adequate if not better in a number of areas, overall productivity in a day will be greater, the work and play will be done in relative comfort, the batteries will last longer when unplugged, and will attract far more oohs and ahhs while also being more comfortable to lug around.

As an aside, the December 20th build of Chimera 0.60 running under 10.2.3 is one of the fastest browser experiences one could hope for.

[yzeater]

Would anybody be interested in me doing some real world tests of a Ti500-512MB vs IBM Thinkpad 866mHz-262MB?

[dvd]

Originally posted by John123:

(3) For now, OS 9 is faster than OS X and not by a tiny margin, either. That might impact this fellow's brother's decision.

margin? ever played warcraft 3 on osx then play it on os 9.. i dont think there'a margin of a difference. its a huge difference.

for some reason i guess for user interface, the pc laptop can be more productive since you can navigate through the computer very fast with only the keyboard. I.E. filemenu,startmenu. For the mac you must you the trackpad most of the time. But i'd still pick a mac laptop over a pc one. reasons is reliablitly, and if there's an error, its easy to fix with the mac os x cd or os 9 cd.

[ngrundy]

Originally posted by John123:
You people who say that your PowerBooks are smoking your Pentiums are smoking something yourselves...

My P4 machine is hands-down faster than my PowerBook. I have bought PowerBooks and love them not for speed but for their simplicity. If raw speed is the be-all end-all for you, then a PC is the better platform (Photoshop notwithstanding). If you would like style, simple functionality, and speed that is more than satisfactory, go with the Mac.

I don't want to get stuck in the middle of this but I thought this particular stat needed to be posted

Ignoring artificially high numbers resulting from network difficulties, we completed 86,950,894 workunits on our best day. This is 0.12% of the total keyspace meaning that at our peak rate we could expect to exhaust the keyspace in 790 days. Our peak rate of 270,147,024 kkeys/sec is equivalent to 32,504 800MHz Apple PowerBook G4 laptops or 45,998 2GHz AMD Athlon XP machines or (to use some rc5-56 numbers) nearly a half million Pentium Pro 200s.

source : http://www.distributed.net/pressroom/news-20020926.html

Dated 26th of September. Look ma a 2ghz athlon got it's butt handed to it by a 800mhz powerpc G4.

Does this actualy mean anything? Yes and no. It shows that the PPC processor is more efficient when it comes to pure number crunching. It still doesn't show much in they way of performace for a end user browsing the web.

Personaly I can't tell the differnce between mozilla on a 1ghz p3 and chimera on a 1ghz G4, they are equaly as fast, if you can't use speed chimera to enable HTTP Pipelining then that's your fault

My old desktop (dual 866) used to take 2-3 minuites to even boot to the login screen, and another minuite to get to a usable desktop. the powerbook can be up and running in under 1.5mins with 5 background apps starting (msn, entorage, ical, cpu monitor)

I personaly care not for frame rates or games for that matter but my 1ghz powerbook will keep pace frame for frame with my friends 1ghz p3 dell laptop.

I'd be very careful saying "if you want raw speed get a x86" The question is what do you want the raw speed for? For games yes i'd say the x86 is going to win hands down when you couple a gforce4 ti4600 with a top of the line p4 or AMD. For scientific number crunching if you flex Alivec (Vector Processing) then you're better off with a G4, but then again you're probably better off with a SGI Onyx or a Cray X1.

Edit: blah not used to UBB/vBulletin tag ing

[accursedcosine]

As a big fan of the "scientific method", someday I'd really like to see the zealotous defense of one platform over another by throwing insults at other people go away. Really, guys and gals, we're better than that.

as a background, I have three machines I use roughly equally:

IBM ThinkPad T22 1Ghz/512mb RAM/30GB 5400rpm HDD/DVD/CD-RW/1400x1050 14" LCD/S3 SavageIX 8MB/802.11/ethernet/modem / Windows 2000

Intel D845GBVL-based Pentium 4 2.26ghz/533mhz FSB/512mb RAM/180GB 7200rpm HDD/GeForce4 TI 4400 128mb/10x DVD/2x Pioneer SuperDrive (same drive Apple originally used, the DVR-A03)/40x CD-RW / Windows 2000 SP3

Apple PowerBook G4/1ghz/1024MB/SuperDrive/802.11/Radeon 9000/60gb 4400RPM HDD/OS X.2.3

My take:

-The ThinkPad and PowerBook are equal on build quality. Before the Thinkpad, I carried a Dell Inspiron 7500... it was NOT comparable. To obtain a similar level of build quality on the PC side of things you really have to go with IBM - in fact, I'd almost say IBM's quality is a bit higher than Apple's. Dell, on the other hand, makes machines with poor hinge designs, flimsy plastic parts and clumsy module bays. They're great if you want a bazillion notebooks for your company, but they are definitely not the best you can find if you are a road warrior. The Thinkpad T series machines are roughly the same thickness as the PowerBook, roughly the same weight, have higher resolution displays if you opt for the 1400x1050 (something I actually miss on the PowerBook) and are made out of Titanium too --- the difference is that the Powerbook's industrial design looks one heck of a lot cooler. People comment up and down that my PowerBook is thinner than my Thinkpad until I place them side by side and they realize that the matte black paint IBM uses disguises what is essentially a similar machine. Battery life is similar between the PowerBook and the Thinkpad, with two hours of real usable life in both machines. (I have NO clue how you people get five hours... do you push the brightness down to "absolutely zero" and keep a very very very very very bright lamp on your desk or something? ) I can get five hours out of the Thinkpad with the module bay extended battery, so I assume two batteries in the Powerbook would work fine as well. (And you can hot swap batteries!!! no clue how, but that is one of the nicest innovations ever.) Another hardware note, both the PowerBook and Thinkpad can predict time remaining on a battery, something Dell and other clone laptops cannot. The IBM goes a step further and also shows you charge current, watt hours remaining, etc. - which are relatively useless except for monitoring the breakdown of a battery over time - and number of charge cycles - which is an extremely useful statistic for knowing when you need a new one!

- Operating system. I do not find Windows 2000 inherently evil. It does what I want it to do when I want it to do it quite nicely, in fact. However, so does OS X. OS X feels more "laggy" in general - opening applications, moving files, etc. is definitely less zippy than on a comparable PC. On the plus side, OS X is more predictable. I was recently using both the desktop and PowerBook to duplicate DVDs. The desktop finished burning them twice as fast due to the 2x burner, but it was a similar speed at copying the DVDs to the hard disk. The difference? The mac said "About 15 minutes remaining", while the PC estimated "4, 3, 2, 1, 1827432 minutes remaining". WHY does it do that? I wound up using the OS X time estimates for both machines...

- Keyboard. This is a big issue for me - I consider myself a "power user", and efficiency in getting frequently performed tasks done is important. I've evolved a style over the years in Windows that makes heavy use of home, end, pgup and pgdown. Losing these keys on the Powerbook has made me miserable, to the point where I really avoid doing text editing on it. The Thinkpad is so much more pleasant for that task, having a full keyboard, and in fact I swiveled my chair slightly to the left so I could compose this message on the T22 instead of the Powerbook (which I had been using to surf the web). What was apple thinking? Similarly, I miss being able to activate everything in the OS through keyboard shortcuts. Even with Full Keyboard Access turned on, OS X is way too mouse dependent for my tastes. There are also some things I wish I could do where there are probably workarounds available - for example, I miss having windows key+R to start an application (I haven't clicked Word on the start menu in over a year; why not just type win+R then type "winword" which takes much less effort and thought if you know it...) Another thing I wish I could do on the mac is launch a Cocoa application from tcsh - if anyone knows how, please reply! I'm essentially looking for the OS X counterpart of the "start" command from windows 2000's CMD.

- Development tools. Windows wins, case closed. I bought the Powerbook in large part to have a high quality Unix to work with, and I am not disappointed - this beats any form of Linux hands down. Project Builder and Interface Builder still can't match the .NET development tools of Visual Studio, though. They are certainly the second best tools I've used, and they're getting much better very quickly, but Apple still has a ways to go.

- Performance. Is the mac slower? You bet. Will you care? Probably not. Since the PowerBook is such a "pretty" machine, you will not mind staring at OS X for an extra two-five seconds to perform the same task a PC would have performed instantly. (Like opening a command prompt. on Windows, start/run/"CMD"/enter/before your finger is off the enter button you have a command prompt. On the mac, click on the Terminal icon in the dock, "boing", "boing", welcome to Darwin, wait 3-4 seconds, then accursedcosine% shows up. But the little boings are fun enough that I don't mind seeing them over and over again. It's a good thing. (OS 9 is much faster... but we all know that dead OSes should stay dead. The benefits of X far outweigh the disadvantages.)

- Video editing. Mac wins. Period. Video editing on the PC made me switch. What a miserable set of tools and miserable performance while using them. On the PowerBook, video editing just works. It also seems faster than anything else I try to accomplish... I suppose Apple put extra effort into tuning for its target media editing market. In any case, I'm sold on it just for that alone (I have a Sony TRV900 3CCD camcorder that produces very good footage and it is great to be able to edit footage while on the go!)

So did this help? Probably not. But at least it gets another perspective out there. One last thing to think about - the PowerBook G4 is made on the same assembly line as many Dell Inspirons. Don't believe it? look at the box for your direct-ship custom order... it says "Quanta" on the side, which is the Taiwanese OEM that handles Dell machines too. The only company I know of that makes their own machines is IBM, with a plant in Mexico...

For me, I'm stuck carrying two machines for now. I like the Mac for my media needs - photo and video - but the Thinkpad caters to my practical side with good software development tools and a copy of Matlab that actually works (no symbolic toolbox on Matlab 6.5 for OS X? That's what makes it useful... come on!) Your brother should ask himself what he wants to do - if the answer is "photoshop and page layout", grab a PowerBook. If the answer is "scientific analysis", get a ThinkPad. (I specifically recommend the ThinkPad brand after seeing other companies' products and the lack of post-sales support) If the answer is basic office tasks, either one will do, and it really comes down to choosing style (PowerBook) or practicality (ThinkPad).

Good luck!
-AC

P.S.: Please read my entire message before flaming me... I really am on your side, I like both platforms!

[John123]

Originally posted by phobos:
Hello john123.
This thing is very tiresome. What exactly you don't believe?
That my powerbook beats a double pentium 3? Well I can't do anything about it. Get over it...
And I'm not smoking anything. So if you have anything more wise to say than say it. Just don't use these kind of arguments. O.k ?
And if you bothered to see the other benchmarks then you would have seen that compared to an athlon the powerbook has lost . But the results were very good on the powerbook side.

I don't know what forces your desbelief. I don't care what platform you think is better or not but when you're disputing my tests and my arguments you insult me beyond belief....

Of course your pentium 4 will be faster than your powerbook. It's not anything new. If someone uses applications that are better optimized for a PC than use a PC. But PLEASE pepople don't say that everything else except photoshop is dog slow on the mac side. This is just plain stupid.

Wow. You're awfully defensive. And you clearly didn't read my follow-up posts before you flew into your tirade. What a shame.

This is what gets so frustrating about Mac versus PC battles. Very few take the time to listen and test comparable machines and instead, most let their bias speak in place of facts and tempered experience.

First of all, your post was rather amusing. You ended it by saying, "But PLEASE pepople don't say that everything else except photoshop is dog slow on the mac side. This is just plain stupid." That's kind of amusing because I didn't even say anything about Photoshop in my post. But now that you mention it...your so-called "benchmarks" overwhelmingly used Photoshop -- which a lot of folks don't give a hoot about. When you switched to Cinebench, the Mac lost.

More to the point, I wasn't even responding to your "benchmarks" in my original post but rather made a summary remark (not even quoting your post!) about people who think their Mac is overall faster than a PC. I also didn't say that anything was "dog slow" on a Mac. Again, your failure to read led you to MISS the fact that I have owned FOUR PowerBooks. Context is very important, and by you getting in a tizzy and offended, you missed nearly all of it.

Now, issa makes two valid points:

(1) That the PowerBook will be "more than adequate -- which is something I pointed out myself when I said, and I quote:

If you would like style, simple functionality, and speed that is more than satisfactory, go with the Mac.

(2) That a laptop vs laptop comparison is meaningful. I agree. It certainly mittigates the PC's edge, although it does not eliminate it completely in my experience.

dvd -- no, I have not played Warcraft 3. Is it faster on OS X? If so, that is certainly the exception rather than the rule. OS X as it stands now will always be a bit slower (excluding true multitasking) by its design, and most applications follow suit. Hopefully Panther will provide improvements in performance.

Edit: accursedcosine just posted his message while I was writing mine. Seems like a solid, even-handed comparison to me.

[Eug]

accursedcosine, your review seems like a reasonable one. However, I should point out that while you only are comparing what you are using, I believe the most appropriate comparison to the TiBook should not be the T22 with Win 2000, but the T30 with Win XP. The T30 has certain advantages over the T22, and XP has certain advantages over 2000.

That said, I prefer the TiBook.

And yes, with (very) light usage I can get over 4 hours with my 1 GHz TiBook, although that's with it dropped down to 667 MHz mode.

[accursedcosine]

Point well taken. The T30 is the replacement for my machine, which was purchased in July 2001, and I would like to obtain one at some point. Unfortunately, funding from my meager job only allows for one new toy every few years, and this powerbook killed this year's budget In my experience, usability is roughly the same between Windows XP and Windows 2000 - I tend to give Microsoft little to no credit for the subpar photo editing tools or for Windows Movie Maker (heh), so XP seems to me to represent only a very small step forward from 2000 in the core operating system. (Its major achievement in my opinion was costing $100 less so that home users could afford to upgrade to a modern, stable OS... something Windows 98 could never hope to be) Subjectively, a switch to XP would also reduce the performance of the PC ever-so-slightly, but I lack the hard facts to back that up. As for the T30/T22, I have used T30s (*briefly*), and their main advantage is having a touchpad to supplement the pointing stick, switching to a 9mm drive to accomodate that change, putting a halfway decent Mobility Radeon in instead of the disgustingly slow S3 SavageIX I have, and providing P4M mobile CPUs in a slightly niftier looking case.

I will give battery life another shot here in a bit. Maybe I'm doing something wrong... I'll fire up a copy of Word or Excel and see how much time I get when only composing a document then report back.

AC

Originally posted by Eug:
accursedcosine, your review seems like a reasonable one. However, I should point out that while you only are comparing what you are using, I believe the most appropriate comparison to the TiBook should not be the T22 with Win 2000, but the T30 with Win XP. The T30 has certain advantages over the T22, and XP has certain advantages over 2000.

That said, I prefer the TiBook.

And yes, with (very) light usage I can get over 4 hours with my 1 GHz TiBook, although that's with it dropped down to 667 MHz mode.

[phobos]

john 123 I've read all your post very carefully.
----
Your post: First of all, your post was rather amusing. You ended it by saying, "But PLEASE pepople don't say that everything else except photoshop is dog slow on the mac side. This is just plain stupid." That's kind of amusing because I didn't even say anything about Photoshop in my post. But now that you mention it...your so-called "benchmarks" overwhelmingly used Photoshop -- which a lot of folks don't give a hoot about. When you switched to Cinebench, the Mac lost
------
On this particular phrase I was not reffering to you but some other guys here that talked about photoshop and slowness. That's why I'm saying people and not john...

It's very logical for the powerbook to loose on the cinebench test. What cinema 4d uses is just plain raw power. No use of altivec to speed things up. So it's logical a 1600MHz machine to beat a 667MHz machine.... If you compare the athlon with a simmilar MHz mac machine you will get the same results. Athlons will get a little higher on open gl rendering. Count on that.I've tested it.

As I said before choose your machine depending on the stuff you want to do. I was one of the guys that thought that the speed of the powermacs is awful compared to a modern pc. Until I've seen both machines side by side on some tests I did. The powermacs are very capable. Ofcourse we need some new technology to get the machine to evolve but just stop the whining.

I agree with acursedcosine about the thinkpads. If I had to buy a PC I would have bought a thinkpad. I've seen them up close and they are very good. Speedwise and qualitywise.

[rjsen]

accursedcosine:
You can use 'open' to start an app from Terminal. For example, 'open -a /Applications/Mail.app' will start Mail.app. My .bash_profile has a few dozen aliases for commonly used GUI programs. Check the manpage for all the options.

On that same note, I find OS X to be faster (for me) largely because of the BSD roots and Terminal -- Terminal + bash is a vastly more efficient CLI than Windows cmd. There's just no comparison; Windows' CLI is a barely functional, use-only-when-desperate, afterthought, while Terminal+bash is a real, well-thought-out, full-blown command line environment. Some (almost all, probably) won't care, but for me it's a big advantage of OS X (or any *nix, for that matter).

As for other apps, I don't really see much difference between Office on my Ghz TiBook and my 1.8Ghz P4. On both systems, it's sufficiently fast that I never notice myself waiting for it, so even if the PC is twice as fast I can't tell. I use Mozilla on the Windows box, and it runs just as well on the TiBook (thought I usually use Chimera there). The only place I see a real speed advantage for the PC is in 3D gaming, where of course the difference is huge. OTOH, OS X seems to multitask a bit better than XP -- I often notice a slight pause when switching apps in XP, while it happens smoothly all the time under OS X, even if one app is eating most of the CPU. Basically, I use my TiBook for all my work (I'm a student/developer) and my PC for gaming.

[schalliol]

Thanks for the help everyone!! He did end up getting one through the ADC Student Program.

[workerbee]

Originally posted by accursedcosine:
There are also some things I wish I could do where there are probably workarounds available - for example, I miss having windows key+R to start an application (I haven't clicked Word on the start menu in over a year; why not just type win+R then type "winword" which takes much less effort and thought if you know it...)

Have you tried LaunchBar yet? Wonderful!

(BTW: thanks for the excellent review! Agreed 100% Those ThinkPads sure are nice...)

[thePurpleGiant]

Originally posted by workerbee:
Have you tried LaunchBar yet? Wonderful!

(BTW: thanks for the excellent review! Agreed 100% Those ThinkPads sure are nice...)

Another high appraisal for Launchbar. Only it is better than the 'run' command, since you can open any application or document with it, without learning what the correct abbreviation is. You make up the abbreviations yourself, amazing.

[issa]

While LaunchBar is a fine program, you may also want to take DragThing out for a test drive to see which better suits your purposes. DragThing also lets you set the key command of your choice for launching apps, documents, URLs, etc., while delivering other handy functions and access to files, folders, etc. as well.

[bamchum]

Originally posted by issa:
While LaunchBar is a fine program, you may also want to take DragThing out for a test drive to see which better suits your purposes. DragThing also lets you set the key command of your choice for launching apps, documents, URLs, etc., while delivering other handy functions and access to files, folders, etc. as well.

I use both!

[workerbee]

Originally posted by bamchum:
I use both!

Junkie!