[Phat Bastard]

I have a rev. A 12" Powerbook, as my signature describes, and I'm really intrigued by the new rev. C 12" PB and its xbench numbers. In comparison to my current PB, I like the bigger hard drive, the better video card, the faster RAM, and most especially the increased bus and processor speeds. Plus I'd get a superdrive which I currently don't have.

Here are the numbers I'm crunching:
-selling rev. A on eBay: I can get about $1600 CDN

-rev. C Powerbook (superdrive and educational discount): $2149 CDN
-add in cost of RAM, tax and another Airport Extreme card: $2800 CDN

net cost of upgrade: about $1200 CDN (+ cost of Applecare later in the year)

Do you think this upgrade is worth it, considering I'd almost get a machine with almost double the power, and a superdrive?

[bkb]

Originally posted by Phat Bastard:
I have a rev. A 12" Powerbook, as my signature describes, and I'm really intrigued by the new rev. C 12" PB and its xbench numbers. In comparison to my current PB, I like the bigger hard drive, the better video card, the faster RAM, and most especially the increased bus and processor speeds. Plus I'd get a superdrive which I currently don't have.

Here are the numbers I'm crunching:
-selling rev. A on eBay: I can get about $1600 CDN

-rev. C Powerbook (superdrive and educational discount): $2149 CDN
-add in cost of RAM, tax and another Airport Extreme card: $2800 CDN

net cost of upgrade: about $1200 CDN (+ cost of Applecare later in the year)

Do you think this upgrade is worth it, considering I'd almost get a machine with almost double the power, and a superdrive?

The Rev C comes with a built in Airport Extreme Card - standard on all PBs now - so that's a $100 US off your numbers. I'd go for it.

[Simon]

How much money you're willing to spend is up to you alone, but at least the performance leap should be great. The rev A 12" was rather sluggish. The CPU had only a small L2 and no L3, the GPU sucked, no DVI, small disk, etc. The rev B was already quite an improvement, but the rev C is awesome. Faster bus, faster CPU, more VRAM, BT, APX. A very nice PowerBook!

If I were you, I'd go to a store, try out the rev C with apps you know and use on your rev A. Compare them. If it feels good, all you need to know is if you want to spend the cash. I probably would, but that's just because I'm not on a tight budget and I love Apple toys.

[Kenstee]

Originally posted by Phat Bastard:
I have a rev. A 12" Powerbook, as my signature describes, and I'm really intrigued by the new rev. C 12" PB and its xbench numbers. In comparison to my current PB, I like the bigger hard drive, the better video card, the faster RAM, and most especially the increased bus and processor speeds. Plus I'd get a superdrive which I currently don't have.

Here are the numbers I'm crunching:
-selling rev. A on eBay: I can get about $1600 CDN

-rev. C Powerbook (superdrive and educational discount): $2149 CDN
-add in cost of RAM, tax and another Airport Extreme card: $2800 CDN

net cost of upgrade: about $1200 CDN (+ cost of Applecare later in the year)

Do you think this upgrade is worth it, considering I'd almost get a machine with almost double the power, and a superdrive?

I'd "tough it out" until the G5. But, that's me. I guess the bottom line is do you feel your increase in productivity with the rev. c justifies the cost of this incremental upgrade when new and better technology is in sight. Only you can decide this. There is no right and wrong.

Take with the appropriate grain of salt this item from Powerpage.org.(4/29/04.

"The PowerPage just got word of a big meeting at Apple last week about the next two years of "exciting Apple products."

The G5 line will be drastically expanded as the cooling technology is proven and the G5 PowerBooks should be "around the corner," a target to me late fall, or in early 2005. Supposedly there are some very interesting elements to the product line, as well as software. Early PowerBook G5s that sources have seen are liquid cooled. One issue: what to do if the coolant escapes.

Everyone in the meeting was surprised and excited about the new direction, and I guess we will see. I think the meeting was for higher ups in various departments, but I cannot confirm that first hand yet."

[NYCFarmboy]

typing this on a rev C 12" powerbook that I've had in my home less than 24 hours...

Its very nice.. and faster than the rev A 12" powerbook I used for a while...and definately MUCH faster than the 500 mhz g3 ibook it is replacing.

but... depends on what you are doing with it.

If you are doing video work, or intensive photoshop work on very large resolution files then yes, the processor speed upgrade would make your life much better.

If you are not doing processor intensive work then wait.

The advice I have heard and agree with is:
Buy a computer you need today...that does everything you need it to do.

If your Rev A does everything you need it to do..don't upgrade.

There will always be better laptops down the line. The G5 powerbooks whenever they do come will radically change things, just like the G4 chip did versus the g3 chip.

The Rev C's are very sweet, but I don't care for the LCD display, particularly that you have to look at it from only a perfect angle or there is a lot of visual distortion. My old ibook has a much better LCD display in my own opinion even though it is not as bright as this new one.

But...it is a sweet machine:
4x dvd burning is what got my attention. (I burn a lot of DVD's on the road)
The faster internal bus speed..very nice.
1.3 ghz...nice...
built in Airport extreme...very nice
USB2... very nice. The Rev A's are USB1 only.
and.. it does not run as hot as the Rev A's. It gets very very warm.. but not so much so that you'd be uncomfortible like I would get with the Rev A that I used.

The 60 gig hard drive is nice, but I wish Amazon.com would allow a build to order thing like Apple does.. I wish I'd have gotten the 80 gig hard drive now...but they are talking about a 100 gig laptop drive coming soon, or maybe even 120, so I will upgrade to that when it is available. (I do a lot of movies/dvd's and you cannot have too much hard drive space for that).


I buy all my laptops from Amazon as they don't charge tax and provide free shipping without hassle. I received my powerbook less than 24 hours after I ordered it online in fact much to my surprise.

[Phat Bastard]

I don't do much processor-intensive work on the Powerbook, but I probably would if the power was there. I mostly use it for the everyday things, email, browsing, office apps, itunes...nothing is so slow to get on my nerves, so there is no impetus there to upgrade.

I'm not on a tight budget...I live at home so I don't pay rent, and instead I buy all the latest Apple toys.

I have a DVI LCD which is right now running analog off my PB, so the mini-DVI in the new PB would be sweet. I currently burn DVDs at the lab I work in, but that usually means staying late when no one is using the machines and that can get annoying. I'm running tight on hard drive space with my current 40 GB as well, so the extra 20 GB would be awesome.

There are thus many little reasons why I would like to upgrade. I would like to wait for the G5, even if it comes out in January 2005 as many people here think. However, the reason why I'm considering upgrading now is I can maximize the amount of return I can pull in by selling my current Powerbook on eBay or somewhere else. Once the G5 Powerbook comes out, that will seriously decrease the amount of money I'd get for my rev. A. G4 (I'd get like at least $500 CDN less).

Of course, when the G5 comes out, I can always sell the rev. C to support my upgrade to the G5! I think this strategy of selling and upgrading on a yearly basis might save me money over the long-term, instead of waiting like 3 years and upgrading without selling my current laptop. I should crunch the numbers in a spreadsheet. Do you guys think this is a wise strategy?

Oh, and thanks for the tip about the Airport Extreme coming built-in, that's great!

[NYCFarmboy]

Sounds like you need a DVD burner.

I have burned over 300 dvd's in the past year on my various Macs ..usually on my dual 1.42 G4 tower, but also on the road where I have use of a various Rev B G4 powerbook or a 17" 1.3 powerbook. I never liked the size of the 17"..just too much to travel with.

My own personal laptop was always the 500 mhz ibook which I absolutely love. I'm very torn now about giving it up, but I already have one "collector" ibook..a orange ibook which works very well. I have a niece who needs a laptop for college this fall, I think the white ibook will be perfect for her.


I intend to keep this new Rev C until the Rev B G5 Powerbooks come out, hopefully by then the screens will be better than what they are on the Rev C's.

[Olorin]

One bit of advice when buying a new PowerBook is to opt for the 5400rpm drive. I have done xbench on a few laptops and the drive makes a difference of up 10 points on the total results, which is a lot for a slightly faster drive. My PowerBook 1Ghz Ti came out with a score of 108 while a rev B 1Ghz AL only got 98. I checked and it was 99% the faster Tibooks drive I installed. I guess the faster RAM doesn't really make a difference. Also turning off the L3 cache on the Tibook lost me about 10 points. Just some interesting info.

Oh and when testing the new G4s be sure to set them to highest automatic looses you about 10 points.

[MikeD]

Originally posted by Simon:
The rev A 12" was rather sluggish. The CPU had only a small L2 and no L3, the GPU sucked, no DVI, small disk, etc. The rev B was already quite an improvement, but the rev C is awesome. Faster bus, faster CPU, more VRAM, BT, APX. A very nice PowerBook!

But does the 12" revC have L3? I thought it only had L2...

Mike

[Phat Bastard]

Yep, 512 KB L2 only, according to Apple.com.

Originally posted by MikeD:
But does the 12" revC have L3? I thought it only had L2...

Mike

[Simon]

Originally posted by MikeD:
But does the 12" revC have L3? I thought it only had L2...

No, rev B and C have only L2 cache (the PPC 7447 doesn't support L3 cache), but they have 512kB of it (which is more L2 than the rev A had) and it's faster than L3 (since it runs at full processor speed).

[kobetsang]

What is the bus speed on the Rev C's 12" and Rev B 15"? I have a RevA 15" Albook 1Ghz. Anyone know how the bus speed compares?
thanks in advance

[Simon]

Originally posted by kobetsang:
What is the bus speed on the Rev C's 12" and Rev B 15"? I have a RevA 15" Albook 1Ghz. Anyone know how the bus speed compares?
thanks in advance

The system bus speed is 167MHz (333MHz PC2700 DDR RAM) on all current AlBooks so it's the same as your rev A 15" AlBook.