[badnewsblair]

Hello everyone. I suppose you could call me a "switcher". Recently, I've been growing more and more unhappy with Windows XP and have started looking for a Mac. I am a graphic artist and am looking for a career in 3D graphics and design, and as such I'm surrounded by 15" Titaniums all day long. My breed seems to be dwindling in numbers and fast, but I had been standing strong against the urge to "switch", until now. I decided to purchase a 17" Powerbook and the transaction went through tonight. Coincidentally, I have a few good friends behind the scenes at two different Apple stores around here, and I had gotten word that one of the stores had the new 17" Powerbook in the back. Long story short, I almost didn't get to see it (being as how I am not an employee). However, not only did I get to see it, I GOT TO PLAY WITH IT at the genius bar!!! For about an hour I sat and opened programs and tested the auto sensing backlight and screen. My girlfriend just sat behind me and smirked. I'm sure she thought I was insane.

I have to tell everyone that is on the fence on waiting for the 17" that the wait is WELL worth it! This machine is so beautiful. It is fast, light, HUGE (yes, it is massive), and the perfect laptop for me. I am looking forward to the day when I will have my first Apple (sometime in late March or early April, I haven't gotten the confirmation date yet). After reading so much information on this message board, I finally got to experience what has been up until now hearsay.

I have to mention that the one I got to use was a prototype and will not go out on the floor because Apple of course doesn't want us playing with a product that might not be up to production standards. Both Apple stores will have one on display tomorrow for anyone else living out here (if you can get out in the snow).

I wish I could say more... don't want to make my introduction TOO unbelievable.

[milhous]

Cool!

But how did you know that unit was a prototype? Was it labeled or branded as one?

Well seeing that it'll be a while until the general public has access to the 17's, I have to ask myself if the 17" is right for me. I don't know if it would be practical to lug such a beast around campus and then break it out to take notes on these tiny desks.

Plus, since I know how it feels to lug my Pismo around and knowing that the 17" weighs more then the Pismo, I just might have to wait for the revised 15.

The 17" is definitely nice, but it's just not for everyone I suppose.

[badnewsblair]

Sorry, the way I knew it was a prototype was because my friend who works there told me. The general manager left, and he asked the person in charge to bring it out to the genius bar for me (seeing as how few people were there on account of the snow). So he brought it out. He told me it was a prototype. That is why it is just going on display. I think that is what is going on with all of these other posts about display models, but no floor model.

If you're taking notes on campus, then I would have to agree with you, the 17" is not for you. It is HUGE. I would recommend the 12". I saw a person in one of my classes whip one out this past week to do just that. But I am graduating in April, so I need a professional laptop to do 3D (mostly Maya), and this is perfect for me given the nature of Maya (4-views, requires lots of screen real estate).

[seanyepez]

The 17-inch PowerBook's 3D card sucks.

[Arch.]

What version of Maya do you, will you, run on your Mac? How up to date is Maya on OS 10?

[badnewsblair]

I use right now (on my PEECEE that I am writing to you with) MAYA 4.5 Unlimited. Of course, MAYA 4.5 is out for OS X, but it is not Unlimited, but is MAYA complete (which is fine, it just lacks the features of Cloth, Fluid Effects, and Fur) all of which you can do manually, but it is a bit tougher. I am actually finishing up my final sester as an undergraduate Computer graphics major by being a Teaching Assistant for a 3D modeling class using Maya in a MAC lab (part of the reason for my switching, a whole lab with Quicksilvers and cinema displays is so enticing). I can also answer other Maya questions if you need. Hope I helped.

[iBorg]

Originally posted by seanyepez:
The 17-inch PowerBook's 3D card sucks.

This is one of the disappointments I have in the specs for the 17"er. I was thrilled to get the ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 chip with my 15" Titanium Gigabook, and expected to see it in the new Aluminum Books - every comparison I've read gives better scores for this, than for the NVidia GeForce4 440 Go.

Granted, these were reviews in PC units, and until the 17"er arrives, we won't see Mac head-to-head results, to see how the Mac drivers have been tweeked.



iBorg

[Landos Mustache]

Originally posted by seanyepez:
The 17-inch PowerBook's 3D card sucks.

Why?

[fireboarder]

Originally posted by iBorg:
the ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 chip with my 15" Titanium Gigabook, and expected to see it in the new Aluminum Books - every comparison I've read gives better scores for this, than for the NVidia GeForce4 440 Go.

So, which card is better, ATI or GeForce?

[AssassyN]

You'll get varying opinions, but in most tests the ATI Radeon 9000 chip outperforms the nVidia 440 chip, but only slightly...and the Radeon 9000 does have those important programmable shaders in which the nVideia 440 lacks, but at the end of the day, unless you're a real hardcore gamer (and let's face it, first, it's hard to be a hardcore gamer on a notebook, and it's hard to be a hardcore gamer on a Mac) the differences won't matter, as both cards will push the most recent Mac games out perfectly fine.

And btw, cool deal on getting your palms on the new 17" PB! I can't wait!

[badnewsblair]

Thanks. You're right, neither card will matter for most of us. They are both top of the line for all notebooks (Mac or PEECEE). Both cards will support MAYA for my work, and WARCRAFT III for fun, so I am more than happy. I'm coming from a GeForce 2 Pro on my desktop PEECEE, so either one is a giant leap up for me. Thanks, it was really cool. I've been reading your posts and I'm sure you'll be happy with your 17".

I'll be sure to post pictures in the 5 - 7 weeks it gets here.

[iBorg]

Originally posted by fireboarder:
So, which card is better, ATI or GeForce?

I don't have time to do the search at the moment, but when the specs for the 12"/17" AlBooks came out, the NVidia chip was a big disappointment, since the ATI was, in PC's, at least, a considerably better, faster video chip. This wasn't just one person's assessment, it was a consensus.

Anyone have links for comparison tests?



iBorg

[badnewsblair]

I tried looking up the numbers but couldn't find any comparisons. Its true that the GF4 Go chip seems to pale in comparison to the ATI 9000. ATI 9000 supports programmable vertex shaders but the GF4 Go does not. That seems to be the biggest difference. I would have to say that the GF4 Go seems to be much more sophisticated especially in power management (for those of you worried about battery life). I understand some disappointment because this is afterall the 17" THE FLAGSHIP OF POWERBOOKS, but I think that those of us that will be recieving our 17" in a month or so will be more than happy with what the FedEx man shows up with. I can't wait!

[AssassyN]

Originally posted by iBorg:
Anyone have links for comparison tests?



iBorg

Yeppers...posted awhile back but still very, very nice benchmarks. Just download the .pdf

Click here for requested benchmarks

[badnewsblair]

Thanks!!!

[badnewsblair]

Here are the specs NVIDIA is giving for the GeForce 4 Go 420 (in the 12" PB) and the GeForce 4 Go 440 (in the 17" PB):

GeForce 4 Go 420:

Fill Rate: 760 million texels/sec.
GPU Core Clock: 190 MHz
Memory Clock: 200 MHz
Memory Bandwidth: 3.2GB/sec.


GeForce 4 Go 440:
Fill Rate: 880 million texels/sec.
GPU Core Clock: 220 MHz
Memory Clock: 220 MHz
Memory Bandwidth: 6.4GB/sec.

If anyone of you know what these mean and can trablsate then there you go. There is a strict, un-real life statistical comparison.

[iBorg]

Originally posted by badnewsblair:
Here are the specs NVIDIA is giving for the GeForce 4 Go 420 (in the 12" PB) and the GeForce 4 Go 440 (in the 17" PB):

GeForce 4 Go 420:

Fill Rate: 760 million texels/sec.
GPU Core Clock: 190 MHz
Memory Clock: 200 MHz
Memory Bandwidth: 3.2GB/sec.


GeForce 4 Go 440:
Fill Rate: 880 million texels/sec.
GPU Core Clock: 220 MHz
Memory Clock: 220 MHz
Memory Bandwidth: 6.4GB/sec.

If anyone of you know what these mean and can trablsate then there you go. There is a strict, un-real life statistical comparison.

Sounds like a pretty significant difference in capability! Do you have comparisons for the Ti Gigabook's ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 video chip? (the 64 MB version in the Gigabook, but perhaps also the 32 MB version in the 867 MHz version?)



iBorg

[badnewsblair]

Here's a good comparison of the MOBILITY RADEON 9000 which is found in the 15" Powerbooks and the GeForce 4 GO 440 which is found in the 17" Powerbooks.

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/...,492860,00.asp

Good comparisons, but it doesn't look that good for the GeForce 4 GO 440 and the 17" PB. I hope that there is a good reason (besides money) that Apple chose the GF4 over the RADEON! (Though the GF4 is any times greater than the GF2 Pro I have in my PEECEE desktop currently... just hope Warcraft III runs well )

[John123]

I will be the first to diss Apple's decision to use the nVidia 420/440 chips...however, do note that ATI has been notoriously pretty bad on the drivers side of chips, while nVidia tends to step it up in that regard for the Mac. The playing field thus may be somewhat more level than the PC hardware reviews would suggest.

That said, I'm keeping my 1Ghz TiBook until a better graphics chip and resolution finds its way into the 17" PowerBook. Sadly, with the current resolutions, you get only 18.6% more pixels with the 17" PowerBook (or 15.7% fewer pixels on the 15" PowerBook, depending on how you want to look at it). Either way, it's not exactly a monumental leap in usable real estate. I probably gain that 15 percent or so back just by using OS 9, which is much less of a screen real estate hog!

Just my two cents...

[urrl5201]

As most of us know the 17" GPU did not do badly at all, running neck and neck with the 15" Ti and in two cases running away with the Xbench scores, notably memory and the OpenGL here:

http://barefeats.com/pb17.html

Although I know this is old news and how undependable Xbench is to some, I cannot put the Geforce down for the count until the 17" has arrived and gone thru more tests. I will not even venture to say the ATI 9000 is better, though perhaps in PC applications. I shall wait and see, and yes, hope Apple knows what they are doing.

[issachar]

Having had enough of lugging around my Dell Inspiron 5000 for the last three plus years, looking at the cracks running up the back of the display hinges, waiting for Dell to refresh the 8200 line of PeeCee dinosaur laptops I had a revelation! I watched the keynote and saw the 17" powerbook an ordered one the first hour they were up in the store. My ship date is on or before 3/20/03 but it seems like it's actually sometime in the next century to me at this point! This is a quantum leap for me as I own thousands of dollars of high end Adobe/Macromedia software and of course have to replace that. Still only a person with no heart could possibly be unaffected by the sight of the 17" Powerbook! Having used a 15" 1400 by 1050 pixel screen for the last three years there was no way I was going down in either resolution or screen size. To think this all comes in a package an inch thin boggles my mind, not to mention a built in superdrive and a 60 gig hardrive. As far as the NVidia card, like it or not they are still the reference card maker for game developers and I am thrilled to have 64mb on board. It cracks me up that IBM uses a 16mb ATI GPU in it's $3500 laptop. I have made the switch...now GIVE ME MY POWERBOOK!

[PabloTX]

Originally posted by issachar:
This is a quantum leap for me as I own thousands of dollars of high end Adobe/Macromedia software and of course have to replace that.

I currently own three Adobe products for the PC (Photoshop 7, GoLive 5.5 and Premiere 6). While considering my switch, I called Adobe to find out if I would be able to effectively exchange my licenses. I was informated that it was fairly painless, and attractive to the consumer.

Basically, if you have the 'up to date' version, you only have to pay ~$20 for the media. In my case, I could do this with Photoshop. Otherwise, you pay the normal upgrade fee, and you get the full version of their software for OS X.

The only thing you have to do is sign their affadafit that you have destroyed the Windows CDs, fax it back to them, and they will send you the new media.

[badnewsblair]

Issachar, I feel your pain. After searching endlessly for a PEECEE laptop that could handle my graphic applications as well as a few games, I felt so disappointed. It's like the PEECEE manufacturers have given up. I suppose I was lost and now I am found. I too ordered my 17" just a few days ago. We will be so better off than our PEECEE co-workers (not to mention the envy of everyone as they sneak past our desks to see the inch thick beauty)! I can't wait!

[GaelDesign]

I love Switchers. They're so enthusiastic, so sincere in their joy and amazement. They haven't become jaded yet.

Actually, I "switched" just about two years ago (right after the first OS X version was released), and I'm still a happy Mac user. Sure, the Mac platform has its share of problems. No product is perfect. But, overall, the style, elegance, ease-of-use, and just plain "cool" factor of the Mac remains unparalleled in the computer biz. The Mac hardware/OS just doesn't look better. It feels better, works better, and is designed for ergonomics in many nifty, subtle ways. Also, the amount of inspiration third-party Mac software and hardware developers get from Apple is astounding. There was so much cool stuff at Macworld this year that you just couldn't imagine you'd ever find in the mainstream PC world.

Anyway, good luck with your 17" PB when it finally comes! I can hardly wait to hear your report!

Take care,

Jared

[badnewsblair]

Heheheh, thanks. Yeah, I'm only a half switcher right now (well, not even a semi switcher in reality because I don't own my Powerbook yet) but when I get my 17" in March or early April, I will still keep my PEECEE. You see, I made it piece by piece and it still hold s alittle place in my heart (the computer one at least) despite the problems XP has been giving me and its blandness. But my friend (who actually I must give the credit for my "switching") says once I start using OS X on a daily basis (instead of just in the MAYA lab I work in). I'm putting up with a little crap from my peecee friends, but its all in good fun, and once I show them the 17" and destroy them at the LAN games, we'll all know what's going on

Thanks, I take it as a compliment!