Powerbook Cost Justified? Options

[darcyb62]

It has finally come time for me to upgrade my hardware. I have been currently been using an old PIII 500mHz with 512Meg of ram and a slow hard disk. I use Tracktion for my host and with a lot track freezing, it becomes somewhat usabe (but just barely)...

Up until recently I had been considering staying on the Windows side, but with the recent introduction of the Mac Mini I decided to take a more serious look at what Apple could offer, so I've tried to do a bit of comparison. I'm committed to purchasing a notebook and I tried to target $2500 (Cdn) for cost.

This is what I have come up with...

On the Apple side:

Powerbook G4 combo drive
15.2-inch TFT Display
1280x854 resolution
1.5GHz PowerPC G4
512MB DDR333 SDRAM
80GB 5400rpm Hard Drive
ATI Mobility Radeon
9700 (64 MB DDR)
Backlit keyboard
Gigabit Ethernet
FireWire 400 & 800
Analog audio in/out
DVI & S-Video out

Cost is $2499 (cdn)

On the PC side:
Dell Inspiron 9200
Intel® Pentium® M 755 Processor (2GHz/400MHz FSB)
17" ultrawide xga+
1 gig sdr ram
128MB ATI's™ Mobility Radeon™ 9700
24X CD-RW/DVD Combination Drive
60GB 7200rpm Hard Drive

I might be wrong on this, but it seems to me that from a performance perspective, Dell would be the better option. In addition, there seems to be a greater number of low cost / free plugins for thw Windows side verses the Mac side (but I might be totally wron with respect to this as my experiience to date has been solely limited to the PC side).

I am really trying to justify the move to Mac but its been a difficult journey. Hopefully this forum can help provide me with some added insight.

Thanks.

[lepetitmartien]

Peabreu, are you saying that FreeBSD is not a mature OS? (I can hear the linux hordes from here coming for the kill

Right now, all the instability onto OSX can be traced to faulty instals, USB quirks (from 3rd party hardware), and buggy software. OS X is rock solid. I don't say XP is less solid, it has also its quirks and given the broad hard and soft possibilities, a hell more prone to come.

OS X is elegant in its own way, if you don't feel at home yet that a question of time. The UNIX base means there's a lot under that is not running as it was so to compare is irrelevant. Right now, the old OS is XP, you mind . the authorize thing is mandatory on a UNIX platform, you can do without but you're trashing a lot of the security. It's a bore yes but it has its advantages too. And in a clean set up, it won't be obstrusive.

the few following rules help a lot:

- have RAM!
- separate files from the OS/app drive
- start with a clean OS
- don't upgrade as soon a new version of the S is out, especially with peripherals in the low end market. The drivers can get nuts.
- After installs: repair permissions!
- try to keep your music set up on an admin user.
- try to keep all your plug-ins in the same library folder.
- uninstall demos when dead or unneeded.
- avoid K (they can do a mess in a set up, really)
- learn OS X! (there are a few sites/books out there worth a read)



I was an OS 9 defender (and I have still an OS 9 set up for graphic work in case) but OS X after 15 month is maybe the greatest experience i have had on a computer to date (about 16 years, windows still give me the creeps). Most of the problem people have is usually related on their habits in Classic. OS X is NOT Classic. And Classic is dead, time to move on (save if your set up runs in OS 9, smoothly, and you don't need more power or features).