hey
i'm trying to decide (STILL!) between getting a powerbook or an ibook. i have to take a loan out for either so 'getting the best i can afford' is a relative idea...

what's the max RAM and hard drive size for the ibook and the powerbook? anyone?



thanks

go to the applestore. Anyway you probably want an external firewire hard drive as this is recomended by virtually all the software recording manufacturers. That way your system and apps are using the internal and the huge audio transfers have a dedicated path to the firewire external drive.

1GHz G4 (No AltiVec) 640 mb RAM 60 Gb on iBook.

I have a 14" 900 G3 iBook and it's pretty good, but I'd go for the PowerBook if you are going to get a loan anyway, it's a more powerful laptop.

Hope that helps,

TD

It is highly mexpected that on Monday, April 19th, new Powerbook and iBook models will be announced. All these have a clock frequency of 1GHz or above. Also, RAm can be in excess of 1 GBytes. The Powerbook has better graphics (which for a DAW doesn't matter much) and a cooler looking design. The higher price of the Powerbook does not give you a huge performance boost.

So if you want your best bang for the buck, in my opinion get a powerbook with the minimum RAM and the biggest hard drive (currently 60GBytes), and upgrade it with non-Apple memory to 0.75 or 1.25 GBytes. This way, you have a powerful DAW right from the beginng.

BTW, I am using a 5 year old B/W Powermac upgraded to G4/500 MHz (!) with 0.75 GBytes of RAM and a 12 GBytes disk, and Logic 6. So if your sequencer/DAW software allows you to freeze tracks, you can have a large number of tracks even without top performance HW.

Have fun!

beware of using non-apple certified ram. it will short out your logic board eventually. if not as soon as you put it in.

Sort again, DAW means Digital Audio Wombat? i will get a book I promise.

Ok Digital Audio Workstation- which could be a keyboard, accordion whatever?

Howdee,
I don't know about the claim that you won't get a significant boost in power by using a PowerBook G4. There are MAJOR differences that increase speed/performance, allow for more RAM, and push more monitors.
I have an older 400Mhz iMav DVSE and it will do most jobs well. I have put 1Gig of RAM in it, and ProTools, Reason, Live 3 and Mac OS 10.3 seem to run pretty well.
I have a 900Mhz G3 iBook, and while it is a little snappier and can push more plug-ins, it hovers around the same performance (overall) as the iMac. Don't get me wrong, the iBook is faster, but not significantly so when running my DAW software.
Now, when I run anything on my PowerBook G4 Titanium (867Mhz) with 768Mb of RAM it cruises! ProTools can handle TONS of plug-ins. Live can handle huge scenes, I can plug in an extra monitor and spread out my projects without any slowdown in performance.
I know 1st hand that you can't do these things with an iBook. Maybe the G4 iBooks are snappier (It is the G4 processor that makes all the difference) but the faster system bus, greater RAM capacity (2Gb on the new PowerBooks vs 640Mb on the new iBooks), the DVI port for digital flat-screen monitors, the added features of a Superdrive (not available in an iBook), bluetooth, firewire 800 AND USB2 (iBook has firewire 400 and USB2), and the larger L2 cache make the PowerBook G4's the major players in the DAW world or any professional application for that matter.
Get the PowerBook if you can afford it - you won't be sorry you did.

BTW: Is Logic really all that? I can't afford it yet, but I hear about it so much I think I may have made a mistake in going with ProTools LE and my MBox.

lushbudget

iBook G4 and 12" Powerbook - 1.25 GB max RAM
15" and 17" Powerbook - 2 GB max RAM

The new iBook tech specs state that its G4 processor has a velocity engine.
Did they not have one in the first iBook G4?

DAW - Digital Audio Workstation
is a dedicated recording/editing software
application and hardware system, used
for hard disk (non-linear) random access
recording and playback. Many DAWs are
used with personal computers using
Windows® or Macintosh® operating systems,
though some use their own proprietary computers.

It is not a keyboard, accordian, or whatever.

Picked up a 12inch Powerbook for Christmas, Powerbooks support dual monitors, and have a larger L2 cache.

The 15, and 17 inch have Firewire 800, the first Firewire800 audio interface has been announced more to come.
Superdrive!