PC Mag's First Look: PowerBook 1GHz

IrateSurf writes "PC Magazine has completed a First Look review of the new Apple PowerBook, which is the first notebook from Apple with a 1-GHz G4 processor. The notebook also has a nice price cut, running $2,999 -- that's $200 less than the last high-end PowerBook model."

Re:Good to see

[curious.corn]

Hey man, do you still chase your colleagues with a ruler in your hand like you did in high school? ;-)
I mean, intel's last promo read: "render a raytraced scene while divx ripping" (the only good thing 'bout it is the anti riaa plug). Huh ok, the kid down the block claims he can have sex 10 times per day; does anybody care (or beleive)?

Buon anno a tutti,
Edo

Re:Cool but...

[GlassHeart]

If you really want to buy an Powerbook, I suggest getting an iBook instead and spend the other $1500 on a PC with a nice 17" LCD display.

Please do not make unqualified suggestions like these, because it implies that anybody who buys the PowerBook is just stupid. I fully expect, for example, that someone who needs to run Final Cut Pro on the road would appreciate or need the extra power. I can barely edit at full DV quality on a 733 MHz desktop G4, so a top-end iBook (800 MHz G3) could be painful to use.

Besides, one may not need, want, or even have room for the $1,500 PC with a nice LCD display.

1ghz powerbook

[lunartik]

I recently umm.. switched-back, I guess.

Collecting dust in my basement is a Mac LC (complete with 2400 baud prodigy bundle modem that still will connect to some things) with a 40MB HD.

Shortly after it was purchased Apple came out with the LCII and the LCIII and suddenly my hardware was pretty out of date. I still spent countless hours using it, and it still boots perfectly if I ever get nostalgic for Phrase Craze Plus or Bomber. Eventually I migrated to a PC.

I have always wanted to go back to using a Mac. Every time Win9x would get so buggy that it would require a reinstall, or worse, a reformat or devices wouldn't run properly I would check into Apple and windowshop. When I took a Photoshop class and the class computers were Macs I felt like somebody that came back home, to find things the same, but yet different. After a few classes it felt natural again.

Recently, I have had the fortune to have some spare cash and the need for a laptop, so again I searched around. I decided on an iBook. Once I saw that there was no SuperDrive available I jumped up to PowerBook. Several clicks later I somehow ended up with the top of the line 1 ghz (and bumped up to 1 gig of RAM for $40 extra during the promotion).

I am not a gamer. I primarily use a computer to create documents, create graphics, browse the web, communicate with people, and listen to music. Whether or not Mhz can be believed, if Apple products are bested in speed, matters little to me. Everything works fantastically for my needs.

I have yet to find a P2P client worth using (even following suggestions on this and other sites) yet my iTunes library stands at over 700 songs. This is due to the ease of ripping a cd with iTunes. It recognizes your cd, you deselect any tracks you dont want to rip, press a button and an entire CD is automatically labeled and filed away.

Anyway, if you ascribe to time = money (which, if you read this site, you probably should) the amount of time you will spend using a Mac makes it a bargain. I haven't touched my PC in a while. It sits in a room broadcasting information to my Airport (which works better than a D-Link card I previously had in a Dell, contrary to some earlier reviews I read).

I know someone that just switched from OS 9 to OSX, and she says that its a tough switch for her, that its very different. I last regularly used a Mac with System 6.0.7 and come to OSX from Windows XP and I have found it easy to use, but probably touching on references from both.

By the way, the REALLY expensive part of owning a Mac is that you want to buy stuff for it all the time. An iPod, a DV camera, a Wacom tablet, Creature speakers, etc, etc. It really does work seamlessly, and makes you want other gadgets.

-DM

Re:Good to see

[pediddle]

I don't want to bash you or your comment, but about your signature -- do I take it that you're an employee at Apple but don't own a Mac, or is that just advertising? Just wondering.

Re:1 GHz?

[Toraz Chryx]

No, the number of execution pipes, the kind of instructions they have to deal with and how well the rest of the system can keep the processor fed with data all have an impact on speed, clock frequency alone is a terrible indicator of performance because.. because well, it doesn't indicate performance.

For a nice extreme example of this, compare an IBM POWER4+ @ 1.45Ghz (austensibly a PowerPC chip) with the Pentium 4 Northwood @ 3.06Ghz

Notice that the POWER4+ beats the unholy crap out of the Pentium 4 even though it's clock frequency is below half?

to be fair...

[Anonymous Coward]

... most current home computers will not have the horsepower to run Doom3.

Re:Don't by a PowerBook

[Anonymous Coward]

"The titanium casing gets scratched and bumby quite easily. Just carry it around in your backpack, and you'll see what I mean."

Or, get a backpack or carrying case actually *designed* for carrying a laptop. It doesn't make a lot of sense to spend for a good laptop, and then make like Ebenezer Scrooge for something to carry it in.