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.

[midnitremedy]

Hi my name is Jeremy (email midniteremedy@gmail.com) and I really need some advice-
I bought a powerbook g4 with 1 gig ram, and 100 gig hard drive, and 128 mb video ram, and a motu 896hd (1000 bucks supposed to have 8 preamps 192 khz audio and im not really sure if its that worth it or if the 896 is better for the money or if i should just scale it down a notch and get the mbox) I tried using it with garageband and i dont know if it was garageband's fault or the rig but the volume was always so low and even after boosting it it was low. I record so far just oen track at a time, but i've had situations in the past where i would want to record 3 or more, like with tarbukas or another guitar or voice and this box should be great for that even a whole drum set (though currently i only have 3 mics a beta 58, sm57 and octava mk-319) and i got a groove tubes DI BOX- is that good? I bought this stuff but have another 2 weeks to return it without a restocking fee- and I really am not sure if i bought correctly i could not afford to buy a program right now even - i was thinking of logic not sure some people say pro tools is easier, etc, i also bought an 02 midi controller and it is too small i think and i have an old casio keyboard which might be enough for me is the truth i just got to get the adapter for midi to usb-....
i need a ton of advice please don't hesitate to email me at inspiredmusic@hotmail.com or midniteremedy@gmail.com (my temporary website is midniteremedy.com)
anyway thanks a lot for your speedy advice- and also do i need more than a gig ram- what if i wanted to record a full 8 tracks simultaneously?
thanks,
jeremy