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.

[GitGeezer]

20-year Win-to-OSX switcher comments:

I switched to a G4 667 Titanium Powerbook about two years ago after years working in the Windows gloom. I actually look forward to using my computer for the first time in many years.

Build quality: the PAINT (I thought it was titanium) is peeling off the hinges on my Powerbook. The newer aluminum pbooks had lines in the displays, and my TiBook has developed a vertical bar down the screen. I'm no longer impressed with build quality.

Stability: I've used PC OS's since before Microsoft had one. OS X is THE reason to go Mac. Follow the minimal advice above (repair permissions) and you should be happy. EVERY version of Windows has acted up on me, even on factory-fresh systems.

I have noticed, however, a disturbing trend to resist OS X upgrades. I always waited on Windows upgrades, often not upgrading for a year. Until Panther (OS X 3) I happily installed every free OS upgrade. No longer. Recent updates have had their problems. It's starting to feel a little like Windows feature-bloat and update-death lately.

Powerbook vs. G5: in 2 years my one-notch-under the state of the art Powerbook (667Mhz,1 Gig memory) is struggling to run crucial apps (Sibelius 3, Live 4.1, Absynth 3) at all and won't even install Garritan Personal Orchestra. Apparently Logic 7 Pro (at $1000) still runs well on G4 systems. I wouldn't risk it. I'll be going to a dual G5 desktop system withing six months. No point waiting for G5 Powerbooks, the software needs dual processor systems. I'm staying with OS X, regardless.

Good luck,
GitGeezer