Post by Mohan RajagopalanHi,
I'm looking at buying a 12" laptop -- but I've had no experience with macs
before so am looking for some help / suggestion.
-- the iBook ( 800Mhz, 128+512M RAM, airport )
-- and the Powerbook ( 1Ghz, 512M RAM, airport etc)
GCC for compiling OS Kernels etc. How much of a difference does the processor
make ?? The Powerbook, seems more powerful and expandable but is about $400 more.
Is the investment worth it considering I'm a poor grad student :-)
Any help/suggestions will be greatly appreaciated.
Thanks
-mr
I got a 14" iBook G4/1GHz vs the 15" AlBook G4/1.25GHz using the
following logic. Maybe some of my reasoning will help you to solidify
your wants/needs
I spent about 2 hours (in 2 separate visits) in an Apple Store
physically handling and playing with the different models.
Heat - The 15" was a lot hotter. It was unconformable sitting
in my lap.
Battery life - (maybe different for the 12" iBook vs Powerbook)
Anyway, the 14" iBook had a 61 watt hour battery. The 15" Powerbook had
a 46 watt hour battery.
Here is where heat is also a factor of battery life. Generally heat
comes from power use. More heat is generally an indication of higher
power consumption. So for me the lower heat (and apparent lower power
draw) and the larger capacity battery translated to much longer
disconnected usage.
The things I passed up were a larger screen and a higher pixel density.
But then again, my previous Mac had the same size screen, so what I
didn't have before, I can miss too much.
640MB max. OK, that might change when 1GB SO-DIMMs become sufficiently
less expensive I can go up to 1.128GB, but that is not going to happen
for a while. My previous Mac had 640MB as well and I did not have any
real problems. If I had been doing really heavy duty graphic/movie
editing then maybe more memory would have been more important, but for
what I do, 640MB and Mac OS X memory management was more than sufficient.
The memory bus is faster in the 15" Powerbook and it has more cache.
But the 14" iBook is more than twice as fast as my previous Mac, so I'm
still making an improvement in my computing environment.
I really wanted the backlit keyboard. Lusted after it. But
heat/battery life were what drove my decision. I figure I can get a USB
light if I really want to work in the dark. Also a white keyboard is
easier to see in low light, than the black keyboard I used to have
(semi-clear bronze keyboard actually).
I used to have a PCMCIA slot, I don't have one now. But then again, I
only used it to read CompacFlash cards from my digital camera, and I can
get a USB adaptor for that.
I used to have 2 firewire ports, now I have 1. I only ever used 1 slot
anyway. Plus most firewire devices have ports so you can chain devices
if you really want.
The 15" uses 800Mbit/sec firewire, the 14" iBook has the 400Mbit/sec
firewire. But my old Mac only had 400Mbit/sec so I'm not missing
anything (I don't think :-)
I do not get a superdrive, so I can not write DVDs. I hardly ever write
a CD, let along a DVD. If I really need to write a DVD, I'll get a DVD
writer device or find a friend with a DVD writer.
I think the Aluminum 15 Powerbook has much nicer styling. No contest.
It is nicer. But the heat and battery life still won out.
The speakers in the 15" are better. So if I want better sound, I'll use
headphones.
Finally less expensive was a bonus, but I could afford the more
expensive system, I made the decision based mostly on heat/battery life.
Again, the systems I was comparing are different from yours, but some of
the features in both systems are similar and some of my trade-off
decisions may apply to you. Your mileage may vary.
Bob Harris