G4s, laptops, MacIntel etc. (fao M. Hirsch)

Continuing from the other thread where I asked you about buying a g4 ibook.

You say the mac mini doesn't have the power to cope with even large firefox pages? Quite shocking really for me at any rate.

I was looking to get a g4 simply because Im looking at getting a laptop, and at the same time I'm looking to get a mac, so I thought about combining the two, and with the lack of laptops containing g4 chips (due to heat and power issues) it doesnt really leave mne with much choice. By the same token i may forgo getting a laptop and going for a high-rnage dual g5 machine instead. I'm doing some authoring work so hopefully money won't be a big issue, otherwise it might just be a PC for me.

Part of having a mac is I really want tiger badly and I can't wait for the intel version to come out, not that it will run so efficiently as it does on the PPC chips. By the amount of work that gets done per clock cycle, intel would have to be looking at almost double the clock speed to get the same amount of work done, in effect meaning in order to outdo the latest g5 2.7ghz chipd intel would have to make a 5Ghz chip. (By my estimations anyway).

As it is I'm looking to hold onto a PPC mac rather than waiting for an intel mac.

The Mini was my first Mac, and like you, I heard somewhere that its 1.42 Ghz correspond to a 2.8 Intel. My old PC was a 1.8 Intel, and right now from "how it feels", I'd say they are about equally powered.

When browsing dev shed forums eg, I usually open the forums index and middle-click all titles that I am interested in. Five to ten pages in a row within a few seconds only.
Then I have to wait for 10 seconds until I can even switch to another tab.

Maybe this one is specific to Firefox, here's the other one I noticed:
Unzipping an archive of 100MB takes three times as long as on a windows machine. Or is "StuffIt" that bad?

I have setup a shell script using tar/gzip to make my daily backups. This takes ages and the Mini's coolers are running at 100%, just as loud as a common WinTel PC would. But since it's my personal data, the decryption of FileVault probably takes some time too.

I didn't do any real benchmarking yet, but I'm going to because I need more first-hand experience. Once I found out how to encode videos without expensive software, I'll do a DIVX5 benchmark. This is pure number crunching and should give us some comparable results for the CPU.

I'd love to get Tiger too, but I refuse to. I have to pay the full price instead of $20 for the update because I ordered the MiniMac two weeks too early.
Regarding their five weeks of delivery time, I feel a bit deceived...

Apple is cool, but they're a for-profit company just like Microsoft. They all work very similar, don't let them fool you. There is no "good guy" in business...

M.

I was hoping for a bigger kick than that...

>>When browsing dev shed forums eg, I usually open the forums index and middle-click all titles that I am interested in. Five to ten pages in a row within a few seconds only.
Then I have to wait for 10 seconds until I can even switch to another tab.

I always do that, mind you I get a couple of seconds delay in windows. This is a 2.4Ghz P4 w/ 1GB RAM so its not short on power, have you compared it against your 1.8?

>>Maybe this one is specific to Firefox, here's the other one I noticed:
Unzipping an archive of 100MB takes three times as long as on a windows machine. Or is "StuffIt" that bad?

No Idea...

>>I have setup a shell script using tar/gzip to make my daily backups. This takes ages and the Mini's coolers are running at 100%, just as loud as a common WinTel PC would. But since it's my personal data, the decryption of FileVault probably takes some time too.

Well for something intensive like backups FileVault could really call some overhead, the problem with the mini is you cant just buy a bigger fan and throw it in unlike a PC... If I got a G5 machine though, I'd be getting a modifiable one.

>>I didn't do any real benchmarking yet, but I'm going to because I need more first-hand experience. Once I found out how to encode videos without expensive software, I'll do a DIVX5 benchmark. This is pure number crunching and should give us some comparable results for the CPU.

Try using XviD, it's open source (when divx went greedy and closed the source, xvid continued being open-source using the same code and it has improved much more than DivX since) and you should be able to find OSX binaries with a quick google.

>>I'd love to get Tiger too, but I refuse to. I have to pay the full price instead of $20 for the update because I ordered the MiniMac two weeks too early.
Regarding their five weeks of delivery time, I feel a bit deceived...

That is really annoying. At least the family pack means if you get some more macs you won't have to rebuy it though. Apparently tiger runs faster than panther too...

>>Apple is cool, but they're a for-profit company just like Microsoft. They all work very similar, don't let them fool you. There is no "good guy" in business...

I agree, although they're an `infinitely better` guy.

They still look like heading down the road of TCPA, they are going to put DRM on the ipod, so theres no way I can call them a `good guy`, but at the end of the day, microsoft is doing far more to try and control you than apple is.


Anyway, what would you recommend I get? Also any ideas on when they'll be able to cram a g5 into a laptop? Apparently they said they will do that before going intel.

Cheers.

James

Yes, this is the only other desktop machine I am running.

Thinking about it again, maybe they meant that a G5 is twice as fast as an Intel with the same frequency. But the G4 definitively not.

I have got most codecs I need, also DivX. I don't mind that it's not OS. But what I am still looking for is something like VirtualDub. iMovie doesn't seem to support non-QT codecs

I'm not sure what to recommend though. If you can still wait some time, wait for the x86. If you still want a PPC then, you can get the (Dual?)G5 probably much cheaper once the x86 has been released.

Isn't that supposed to happen still this year? Gotta get some updates on the current situation myself...

M.

Hmmm. According to this forum post at doom9.org, the Mac G4 is even worse than what I just told above. And the G5 doesn't seem to be much better either

They're talking about optimized code to possibly perform better. But well, I can only work with what is out there already...

I am going to do some encoding myself these days. I think I'll use QuickTime Mpeg4 to give equal opportunities to both.

M.

Sorry about the long post, shrunk the font in order to aid size

I tend to trust d9, especially their annual codec comparisons.

IMO apple are shooting themselves in the foot going intel, but if it means cheap PPCs, let 'em drown.

Ive just been putting some customised macs together on the apple site.

As I'll count as a student in 2 months I can get the educational discount which softens the blow a little, but for the meantime the prices are still quite high. I was contemplating getting a Mac Mini, but after your experience I'm put off...

My ideal PowerMac

And that's with an educational discount! *gasps*

Failing that (most likely ), this imac
Still possibly out of range so maybe I will settle for mini:As far as laptops go, I would be inclined toward getting one, I loved my previous WXP laptop that sadly stopped working just outside of warranty.
Probably settle for this though:

I have a year old 1Ghz iBook running Tiger and everything works fine for me, I've never noticed a major problem using Firefox though I do generally use Safari; no problems there anyway.

The G4 is pretty old now we all have to admit but it still has some kick left in it. I'd say as a first Mac the Mini or one of the new laptops would be just fine for pretty much everything you'd probably wana do.

Case in point: I do the majority of my development on my Mac now and I love it, Xcode is simply amazing IMO. I've also been playing more and more games and am yet to hit a problem there either.

For the money it's not so bad when you think about it, its definitely not top of the line but it does what it says on the box.

Either way, I'd grab still pick a PPC Mac over the newer Intel right now. We'll just have to see if this changes sometime in the future.

My $0.02 anyway .

Take care,

Mark.

FYI about a week ago IBM released new G5 chips including one that has suitable power consumption for a laptop. Cross your fingers, I've still got a G3 powerbook because I keep hoping the G5's are right around the corner. Here is a news article concerning the new chips

Thats awesome, great news for fans of the PPC architecture. Maybe another company will pick it up from here or Apple will revert – although I doubt it – thanks for the info .

Mark.

Apple promised they would release a laptop with the g5 before the intel switch if it were possible, so I will definitely be bbuying that if they keep true to their word.

Its the last decent computer theyll make for about 8 years until intel gets to some really high speeds.

Why they didn't choose AMD defies logic, although as intel make a host of other mac parts already, perhaps the answer is clear?

You get the top of the range macs before they go intel and you're set for a long long time.

my first MAC is Powerbook G4 1GHz, and I have to agree with this idea It seems like my old P3 1.2GHz. Even with 768MB RAM, it's not as fast as I thought. I love Tiger, but not the performance