[righteousboy]

Hi All,
I need a new pooter.
Im a mac virgin (so to speak), although in the distant past I have used them occasionally. Given how much more an IBook is compared to ageneric 'wintel' laptop I have a few questions....

What sort of performance will a 12" G4 Ibook give? If someone could put it in terms of WinXP Pcs that would be great.
Ive heard Macs 'last longer' than PC's, ie I wont have to buy a new one in 2 years. How true is that?
Id like to move away from Windows, so eiter its mac or a unix clone on PCs. any comments?

I only have enough budget to to this once, pointers and help appreciated, ie what else will i need to buy?

thanks
Dave

[Berman]

i'd wait for the new intel ibook's to come out. they will have a LOT more power than the current G4 ibooks. you are going to be rather disappointed if you don't wait when the new intel ibooks in 4 months have twice the power of the current G4 ibooks. also, the current ibooks only do 1024x768, which imho isn't enough. the new ones will have a higher resolution.

macs do tend to 'last longer,' in that os x doesn't get crapped up with viruses, spyware, and a bloated windows registry. ever notice that a windows machine gets slower and slower over time? that doesn't happen on a mac.

note that I have a 12" G4 ibook, so i'm not hating just trying to give you solid advice.

[pat++]

The iBook G4 is a pretty nice machine, but it's starting to get very old, and is due for a complete redesign including a better screen and an Intel chip. I would wait for 1 month and see what happens. It's likely that the new MacBooks will be released very soon to replace the aging G4. And btw, you'll still be able to run Windows if you need it on the new Intel based MacBooks.

btw, I have a 12" iBook (my second one) which I still love

I kept my first iBook for 3 years before the screen died... I wouldn't have replaced it otherwise.

[harrisjamieh]

Originally Posted by Berman

macs do tend to 'last longer,' in that os x doesn't get crapped up with viruses, spyware, and a bloated windows registry. ever notice that a windows machine gets slower and slower over time? that doesn't happen on a mac.

Also, with each version of windows, 95 to 98 to ME/2000 to XP, the OS will run slower on an older (or even a newer) windows box. With OS X, it is generally the trend that the OSs actually get faster as they get more advanced, even on older hardware. very impressive.

[righteousboy]

Hmm, as with all things technical its going to be obsolete next week/month/year...
Given Im currently using a 1024x768 p3 450Mhz laptop thats on its last legs I could do with something sooner than later.
Does noone have a meaningful comparison to wintel I know the intel chips are 'faster' but without knowing how much a g4 can do how would i notice?

How certain is the intel ibook release date? Is it likely that the G$ will be heavily discounted as it vanishes?

thanks for the input

Dave

[Berman]

Originally Posted by DaveS

Hmm, as with all things technical its going to be obsolete next week/month/year...
Given Im currently using a 1024x768 p3 450Mhz laptop thats on its last legs I could do with something sooner than later.
Does noone have a meaningful comparison to wintel I know the intel chips are 'faster' but without knowing how much a g4 can do how would i notice?

How certain is the intel ibook release date? Is it likely that the G$ will be heavily discounted as it vanishes?

thanks for the input

Dave

its hard to make a comparison to an intel chip. thing is, why would you buy a machine now when one that is far more advanced is due out very very soon?

the 13.3 screen will be much nicer, and the intel chip much faster. this isn't some small incremental speed increase, it will be night and day.

[Gamoe]

Originally Posted by DaveS

Im a mac virgin (so to speak)

And you're likely to remain that way even after you switch, 'cause Macs don't screw you, unlike Windoze PCs.

Originally Posted by DaveS

Ive heard Macs 'last longer' than PC's, ie I wont have to buy a new one in 2 years. How true is that?

Depends on what you need. I've had all my macs for more than two years before upgrading, and some of my old Macs are still used for some things.

Originally Posted by DaveS

Id like to move away from Windows, so eiter its mac or a unix clone on PCs. any comments?

If you're not technically inclined, I'd advise not switching to (another) UNIX/Linux as your main platform. Although if your computing needs are simple, a PC running Ubuntu Linux will let you use the web, e-Mail and other basics right "out of the box". Still, I've seen nothing close to iMovie, Photoshop, etc. on Linux and it seems you can't avoid using the terminal at times. In Mac OS X, thee terminal is there if you want it, but not at all a requirement for "normal" computer use.

Originally Posted by DaveS

I only have enough budget to to this once, pointers and help appreciated, ie what else will i need to buy?

Then take everyone's advise and wait for the Intel iBooks (which will be called MacBooks). I got my first Mac when Apple was transitioning to the PPC from the 68K chip. Both were being sold then (It was a slower transition that the one Apple is trying to pull off now). I got the first PPC model, while some friends of mine got 68K Macs.

Not long after, and certainly years down the road, I was able to run many things that my friends couldn't. There are differences between that and this transition, certainly, but the fact is that there will be more future support and features available for Intel Macs.

You have no investment in Classic or PPC software, so why get on that train? Wait for the new MacBooks. Word is that they'll be out within a month or three, at most. In any case, the G4 iBooks will probably be discounted then, and you can get a better deal even on these if you decide to go that route.

[pat++]

as for comparison to an Intel chip, from what i've seen my G4 1.2ghz (previous iBook G4 model) is roughly equivalent to a 2.4ghz Celeron on most tasks. It can be much faster on applications optimized for altivec like Quicktime encoding/decoding for example. It will be slower than a Pentium M.... It's really hard to compare though. For day to day use, you wouldn't see that much of a difference I guess, only if you are doing heavy tasks like divx/mpeg4 encoding for example.

just one more thing: if you wait for the intel MacBook, you'll likely get a built-in iSight camera as well which is a $149 add-on if you want to get one for an iBook G4.

[Dr. DDS]

I have a 14" / 1,42Ghz ibook with 512MB ram.I think it's faster than my previously athlon 2,2+/512ram/win XP. Especially in photoshop. In Mac OS X i run more aplications at the same time without crashing the system like win xp. A think i will buy more RAM just to work better with imovie and other aplications at the same time. imovie is included in tiger and there's not like this in win xp. And at last, no viruses!!!

[righteousboy]

Thanks for the advice. As long as this box doesnt die tommorow Ill hang on for a macbook i think, or at least a heavy discount on a G4 .
I work in OS programming, so other *nix (POSIX) OS's are my day to day, but at home Id like something which doesnt need tinkering with unless I want to, I have enough of that at work hence the MAC option.

Dave

[Berman]

Originally Posted by DaveS

Thanks for the advice. As long as this box doesnt die tommorow Ill hang on for a macbook i think, or at least a heavy discount on a G4 .
I work in OS programming, so other *nix (POSIX) OS's are my day to day, but at home Id like something which doesnt need tinkering with unless I want to, I have enough of that at work hence the MAC option.

Dave

wise choice.

[intervenetd2]

Yeah I'm on a little Ibook G3.. DONT HATE but I probably use my mac 90% of the time over My PC. I just let her click all the adds and all that she wants because when I was doing my work on that computer....psht... lil popups would come up FOR NO REASON. I could be playiin starcraft an some crap **** would pop up. I would clean it out...an wam some other adware **** would slip in. Even if you got norton and mcafee and all that crap...that **** laggs your computer just as much as the damn virus/adware **** would. I've been on this mac for now a year and damn....no adware, no virus's. I'm lovin it....really these macs aint the same macs you had back when you were in school. I KNOW YOU ALL REMEMBER THE PROMPT WITH THE BOMB FORCING YOU TO RESET....haha those were the days but no more. I'm lovin macs these days. Plus I like how its easy to get rid of programs rather than uninstalling an worrying about files being left behind to take up registry space

[harrisjamieh]

Originally Posted by intervenetd2

Yeah I'm on a little Ibook G3.. DONT HATE but I probably use my mac 90% of the time over My PC. I just let her click all the adds and all that she wants because when I was doing my work on that computer....psht... lil popups would come up FOR NO REASON. I could be playiin starcraft an some crap **** would pop up. I would clean it out...an wam some other adware **** would slip in. Even if you got norton and mcafee and all that crap...that **** laggs your computer just as much as the damn virus/adware **** would. I've been on this mac for now a year and damn....no adware, no virus's. I'm lovin it....really these macs aint the same macs you had back when you were in school. I KNOW YOU ALL REMEMBER THE PROMPT WITH THE BOMB FORCING YOU TO RESET....haha those were the days but no more. I'm lovin macs these days. Plus I like how its easy to get rid of programs rather than uninstalling an worrying about files being left behind to take up registry space

didnt understand 50% of that....

[fesdds]

I had my first iBook for almost 3 years and my current one is almost 1 year old. I love the iBooks, but would wait if at all possible. Since you can only do this once and want it to last for some time hopefully you'll be impressed with the next release and have a great Mac for several years. I my self am waiting, because I need 3 new laptops at work and also want the best longevity. And my office software is already universal binary.
Good luck.

[QuadG5Man]

Refurbished prices on the 1.33 iBook are attractive. No one really knows how much the infamous 13.3" ibook/macbook will cost.

But it will make the 1.33 look like a turtle, in speed I mean.