[Sw1tcher]

Hi folks, new to the forum and a PC switcher. I just bought a new 1Ghz Powerbook (sans Superdrive), although I have a few gripes.

1) Three dead pixels, which Apple say does not qualify for a replacement Powerbook. All them defy massage.

2) Much slower than my Sony Vaio than I expected.

3) OSX is a plus, being from a Unix background, but it runs mighty slow in Terminal, just invoking sudo takes 6-8 seconds and is annoying. The general GUI features are becoming an annoyance.

I need to be given some hints of where I could go to hack the OS a little to customize the layout. Are there themes to OSX? If so, where?

I must say that I've used the laptop for a week and after that I went back to my Vaio Linux/WinXP laptop, it just seemed so much more faster and better, although it has a 2.4 Ghz Pentium. So far dismayed by this buy. I'm gonna give it a go for a few more months but if it stills seems sluggish I'm goin' back. It seems to me the major problem with these Apple notebooks is the speed. In general, the Pentium chips are edging ahead (in some scores I compiled, way ahead). Just in a downer, I believed the hype and I think I've been burned. I'm a sys admin and programmer who works in science as a profession and these new observations have convinced my co-workers to stick to the Intel/AMD duoploy. A damn shame.

[riverfreak]

Originally posted by Sw1tcher:
Just in a downer, I believed the hype and I think I've been burned. I'm a sys admin and programmer who works in science as a profession and these new observations have convinced my co-workers to stick to the Intel/AMD duoploy. A damn shame.

Perhaps you should install linux on it then if you really want to see it fly. BTW, I work in science, bioinformatics in fact, and I use Macs day in and day out, with fink, Xwindows, and Xemacs, of course. And lots of people in my field are following suit.

[seanyepez]

Originally posted by Sw1tcher:
Hi folks, new to the forum and a PC switcher. I just bought a new 1Ghz Powerbook (sans Superdrive), although I have a few gripes.

1) Three dead pixels, which Apple say does not qualify for a replacement Powerbook. All them defy massage.

2) Much slower than my Sony Vaio than I expected.

3) OSX is a plus, being from a Unix background, but it runs mighty slow in Terminal, just invoking sudo takes 6-8 seconds and is annoying. The general GUI features are becoming an annoyance.

I need to be given some hints of where I could go to hack the OS a little to customize the layout. Are there themes to OSX? If so, where?

I must say that I've used the laptop for a week and after that I went back to my Vaio Linux/WinXP laptop, it just seemed so much more faster and better, although it has a 2.4 Ghz Pentium. So far dismayed by this buy. I'm gonna give it a go for a few more months but if it stills seems sluggish I'm goin' back. It seems to me the major problem with these Apple notebooks is the speed. In general, the Pentium chips are edging ahead (in some scores I compiled, way ahead). Just in a downer, I believed the hype and I think I've been burned. I'm a sys admin and programmer who works in science as a profession and these new observations have convinced my co-workers to stick to the Intel/AMD duoploy. A damn shame.

Sorry to hear about your dead pixels, but it's in-specification for most manufacturers. You're either going to have to return the machine, exchange it for another unit, or deal with them. Surprisingly, Apple has one of the better replacement policies in the industry.

In recent history, Apple's been behind the times in terms of speed in their notebooks. You can't compare something with a single, 1-gigahertz mobile processor to a 2.4-gigahertz desktop CPU in a machine twice as thick and significantly larger all around. The PowerBook's meant to be portable; the GRx-series Sony VAIO's aren't.

Well, you bought a Mac. Hopefully, you tried it before you bought it. The GUI features are more of a plus for me. You can turn many of them off (drop shadows, minimizing animations).

There are themes for OS X. Go to www.versiontracker.com.

[Sw1tcher]

Thanks for the info. I agree about the Linux distros. I'm waiting for a new version of YellowDog. I've installed Xwindows which is a plus. Just bummed out by the speed. I'll investigate the versatility a little more. It's early days but the Powerbook will be put through it's paces.

I agree about the Vaio, it is a little thick and aesthetically, the Powerbook is ergonomic and well designed. Dead pixels aside, and apart from the "oooh arr" factor, the machine is a cool design. I'm a substance over style kinda person and I'm having trouble searching for the substance right now.

In fact, I wish I went for the iBook instead. It seems better value considering what I'm going to end up doing with the hardware.

[lokjah]

yeah man sorry to hear about your review, i would definetely rant about the dead pixels and do all the calling you can to get a replacement.

and you shouldnt have felt bad and got an ibook instead. a Tibook runs circles around the anitquated ibooks. and i think you would have been extremely disappointed with a G3 processor.

l�k

Originally posted by Sw1tcher:
Thanks for the info. I agree about the Linux distros. I'm waiting for a new version of YellowDog. I've installed Xwindows which is a plus. Just bummed out by the speed. I'll investigate the versatility a little more. It's early days but the Powerbook will be put through it's paces.

I agree about the Vaio, it is a little thick and aesthetically, the Powerbook is ergonomic and well designed. Dead pixels aside, and apart from the "oooh arr" factor, the machine is a cool design. I'm a substance over style kinda person and I'm having trouble searching for the substance right now.

In fact, I wish I went for the iBook instead. It seems better value considering what I'm going to end up doing with the hardware.

[cruise]

Originally posted by lokjah:
yeah man sorry to hear about your review, i would definetely rant about the dead pixels and do all the calling you can to get a replacement.

and you shouldnt have felt bad and got an ibook instead. a Tibook runs circles around the anitquated ibooks. and i think you would have been extremely disappointed with a G3 processor.

l�k

I agree about the G3. I sold my iBook and just bought a TiBook because of the iBook's underwhelming performance. My TiBook definitely runs circles around it.

[riverfreak]

Originally posted by cruise:


I agree about the G3. I sold my iBook and just bought a TiBook because of the iBook's underwhelming performance. My TiBook definitely runs circles around it.

yeah, the ibook is nice (great form factor, although the screen seems so cramped now), but if you don't like the performance of the term on the Ti, Whoa!

On the ibook you can watch ls scroll by (and you can to some extent on the Ti), but in linux it just *appears*. Okay, I just did a recursive listing and it's pretty darn fast on the Ti (the way it should be, mind you) Not sure why sudo is so slow though, although once you've authenticated it;s fast until you time out.

[cowerd]

are you running battery or plug-in when checking performance?

sudo is instantaneous on my terminal--default tcsh--1GHZ/1GB RAM TiBook. You should check your install and repair permissions with Disk Utility, cause there shouldn't be any lag with sudo. You're either exaggerating, or...

[CheesePuff]

Enabling sudo in Terminal takes about half a second here.

I would recommend doing a reformat of OS X.

Put the Mac OS X installer disc into your CD-ROM drive and restart holding the "c" key down until it starts booting off of the CD. Then go through the steps and make sure you have it erase the hard drive before installing Mac OS X. And when thats done, restart, and update to OS X 10.2.2 through the Software Update preference pane in System Preferences.

[Sw1tcher]

Well, I re-zeroed the HD, installed again.
I have a 60 gig HD and assigned 10 gigs for OSX and misc installations I'll have there. 30 gigs for my Music and Applications (I just got used to having my apps and mission critical docs on a different partition), 10 gigs for a Linux install and the rest for a downloads partition. Install went smoothly, did the combo update, repaired permissions. Journaling is not enabled.
Now I'm kicking myself, this thing flies like a "bat outta hell". No sudo slowdowns, no slowdowns at all, except when compiling some source code. Things do hit a wall there, compared to the sony, but at least I can still surf the web and write documents whilst that's happening and not miss a beat.

If this keeps up then the PC laptop is going to my nephew and I'm also going to buy a desktop Powermac as well.

Man, OSX is pretty cool when you get it tweaked right. Just been compiling and using the new Linux kernal and I'm not going to bother to spend X hrs playing with that.

2 dead pixels now that i massaged one in the centre aggressively. Things are looking mighty better.

Now to decide, wait for 64-bit or no? This may seem a tad rash, but does anyone have a clue when the desktop line will be updated?

[CheesePuff]

Late January will be the next line of Power Mac G4 updates.

And around late March or April will be new PowerBooks, but not to worry your 1 GHz will still fly then, too.

I must warn you though - sometimes installing applications on a different partition than the System OS itself causes problems.

[cambro]

Originally posted by Sw1tcher:
Well, I re-zeroed the HD, installed again.
Now I'm kicking myself, this thing flies like a "bat outta hell". No sudo slowdowns, no slowdowns at all, except when compiling some source code...
Man, OSX is pretty cool when you get it tweaked right.

Well, all's well that ends well, right?? Anyway, I'm glad you got things smoothed out.

Also, if you are a scientist, then you should definitely look into G4 programming optimizations (so-called altivec or velocity engine). With some relatively simple code modifications, you can increase the speed of many programs/applications by up to 6 times. Do a search on google for altivec or G4 velocity engine and you will find some good examples. Also, Apple's developer page has some G4 altivec help. If you do say a climate simulation model, then the performance with optimized code will give run times on par with Pentium processors about 4 times faster (translation...Pentium 4.0 Ghz). Speed on a G4 for scientists should be a major bonus not a major drawback.

Good luck!

[Sw1tcher]

Yes, I understand that Apple applications have to be in the Apple application folder, including Explorer. How strange?!
I just put applications like my recently acquired version of Office, Photoshop, Illustrator etc. I might change things if it gets too difficult.

I'll also look into the altivec stuff. Thanks for all the hints and I hope to peruse these boards with interest.

[Commodus]

There's no definite information, but a frequent rumour (and one not entirely without basis in fact) is that those 64-bit PowerPC 970 chips will be included in PowerMacs at or shortly after MacWorld New York, which is in mid-July next year. They promise to be roughly as fast (in general use, not just optimized apps) as Pentium 4s twice their speed (the debut chip would run at about 1.8 GHz). We'll see how that works out, though...