Hi,

I'm looking at buying a 12" laptop -- but I've had no experience with macs
before so am looking for some help / suggestion.

Could someone help me qualitatively compare two apple laptops :
-- the iBook ( 800Mhz, 128+512M RAM, airport )
-- and the Powerbook ( 1Ghz, 512M RAM, airport etc)

The applications I'm planning to run will be fairly compute intensive eg:
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

In article <b1314877.0312041745.467d1b60@posting.google.com >,
mohan@cs.arizona.edu (Mohan Rajagopalan) wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I'm looking at buying a 12" laptop -- but I've had no experience with macs
> before so am looking for some help / suggestion.
>
> Could someone help me qualitatively compare two apple laptops :
> -- the iBook ( 800Mhz, 128+512M RAM, airport )
> -- and the Powerbook ( 1Ghz, 512M RAM, airport etc)
>
> The applications I'm planning to run will be fairly compute intensive eg:
> 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

mohan@cs.arizona.edu (Mohan Rajagopalan) writes:
>
> I'm looking at buying a 12" laptop -- but I've had no experience
> with macs before so am looking for some help / suggestion.
>
> Could someone help me qualitatively compare two apple laptops :
> -- the iBook ( 800Mhz, 128+512M RAM, airport )
> -- and the Powerbook ( 1Ghz, 512M RAM, airport etc)

I assume you're discussing the current model iBook (G4-based) and not
an older, discontinued G3-based model.

> The applications I'm planning to run will be fairly compute
> intensive eg: 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.

The best place to start is with Apple's spec sheets.

For the iBook: http://www.apple.com/ibook/specs.html
For the PowerBook: http://www.apple.com/powerbook/specs.html

Here are the difference between them. Features I didn't mention are
common to both units.

Processor: IB: 800MHz, 256K L2 cache
PB: 1GHz, 512K L2 cache

Memory: IB: 256M, expandable to 640M
PB: 256M, expandable to 1G

Disk: IB: 30G
PB: 40G

Video: IB: Mobility Radeon 9200, 23M SDRAM
PB: GeForce FX Go5200, 32M SDRAM

External video: IB: Mirroring only
PB: Dual-display

Optical disk: IB: Combo Drive (CD-RW/DVD-ROM)
PB: Combo Drive or SuperDrive (CD-RW/DVD-R)

Wireless: IB: optional internal BlueTooth
PB: built-in BlueTooth

Audio: IB: no line-in port (need USB/FW device for this)
PB: line-in

My recommendation would be the PowerBook, because it is 200MHz
faster, can take more memory, and supports dual-display operation.
Given your expected environment (sofware development), I think you
would agree.

Dual-display is very nice. When you're at home, you can plug in your
external monitor and get a high resolution desktop, using the PB
screen as a secondary display, where you can place tool palettes and
such.

It's also nice when debugging if your running application is on a
different screen from the debugger.

But the iBook is no slouch on its own merits. I think you'll be
happy with either one.

-- David

In article <m2k759ettq.fsf@qqqq.invalid>, shamino@techie.com (David C.)
wrote:

> I think you'll be happy with either one.

Ding!

Isn't that the truth! Us poor Mac users - having to decide between the
two best laptops ever made.

:_(

(tear)

Chip

--
(note: email address munged -- there are no punctuation marks in the
part preceding the "at" symbol)

In article <m2k759ettq.fsf@qqqq.invalid>, shamino@techie.com (David C.)
wrote:

> Memory: IB: 256M, expandable to 640M
> PB: 256M, expandable to 1G
>

Although note that a number of places are now offering (expensive) 1 gig
chips for the iBook.

> Disk: IB: 30G
> PB: 40G
>
> Video: IB: Mobility Radeon 9200, 23M SDRAM
> PB: GeForce FX Go5200, 32M SDRAM
>
> External video: IB: Mirroring only
> PB: Dual-display

There's a hack that allows the iBook to do the dual-display thing as
well.

Bob Harris wrote:

>

Great detailed comparison, Bob. Thanks.

>
>
> 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...

David Silbey writes:
> David C. wrote:
>
>> Memory: IB: 256M, expandable to 640M
>> PB: 256M, expandable to 1G
>>
>
> Although note that a number of places are now offering (expensive) 1 gig
> chips for the iBook.
>
>> External video: IB: Mirroring only
>> PB: Dual-display
>
> There's a hack that allows the iBook to do the dual-display thing as
> well.

I assume that someone who feels a need to ask this newsgroup for
advice will not be interested in installing hardware and system hacks
that are completely unsupported by Apple and may create problems
should he need warrantee service.

-- David

In article <m2d6ak9mn8.fsf@qqqq.invalid>, shamino@techie.com (David C.)
wrote:

> David Silbey writes:
> > David C. wrote:
> >
> >> Memory: IB: 256M, expandable to 640M
> >> PB: 256M, expandable to 1G
> >>
> >
> > Although note that a number of places are now offering (expensive) 1 gig
> > chips for the iBook.
> >
> >> External video: IB: Mirroring only
> >> PB: Dual-display
> >
> > There's a hack that allows the iBook to do the dual-display thing as
> > well.
>
> I assume that someone who feels a need to ask this newsgroup for
> advice will not be interested in installing hardware and system hacks
> that are completely unsupported by Apple and may create problems
> should he need warrantee service.

You'd be surprised. I have a couple of coworkers that are exactly that
sort of people.

G