 Powerbook Cost Justified? |
 Thu 3 Feb 2005, 15:19
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 Newbie Group: Members Posts: 4 Joined: 03-Feb 05 From: Regina - CA Member No.: 59,724  |
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. |
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Sat 5 Feb 2005, 05:50
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Newbie Group: Members Posts: 17 Joined: 16-Apr 04 From: Upper Darby - US Member No.: 41,142 |
The biggest reason you buy an Apple laptop is build quality. Most other laptops feel like and look like they're made out of recycled milk cartons.
If you have the chance to get you fingers on a PowerBook, give it a test drive. It's as capable as any laptop when it comes to real world performance. I've got a 1.25ghz 15" PowerBook and a dual 2ghz G5. Quite frankly, if I could own just one, the laptop would be vapor. For the $2500 you have to spend, very few computers even get in the same league as a G5. It's a beast. While running a Mac isn't the cheapest way to go, there is a good reason why half of all Avid editing suites and about 90% of professional ProTools systems are Macs. It's not because the tech heads that use them won't learn a new OS. In fact, Avid was fazing out Mac development until they received a backlash from its customers. And Alias sells almost one third of its seats for Maya to Mac users. Personally, I have never once felt hobbled by the Mac OS when it came to audio. Since I also do 3D, it would be nice to have SoftImage or Houdini on the platform, but you can't have everything. Best of luck and I hope you enjoy whatever you get. You can do great work on either platform. It ain't the tools, baby... Jeff |
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Posts in this topic
darcyb62 Powerbook Cost Justified? Thu 3 Feb 2005, 15:19
Dustan Hi! There...
It's always hard to compare ... Thu 3 Feb 2005, 16:47 darcyb62 Thanks for the response Dustan... Stability is on... Thu 3 Feb 2005, 17:36 editbrain apple customer care is not really nice to there us... Fri 4 Feb 2005, 07:44 mfroman I bought my first PowerBook back in 2000, after af... Fri 4 Feb 2005, 22:31 peabreu IMO it all ends up with what you feel better with.... Sat 5 Feb 2005, 00:24 lepetitmartien Peabreu, are you saying that FreeBSD is not a matu... Sat 5 Feb 2005, 01:14 Narayan Hi, I have been using PC and a music composer who ... Sun 27 Feb 2005, 17:51 editbrain Jeffca,
I own a 12" powerbook 867mhz, and a d... Mon 28 Feb 2005, 04:47 simmac Hi Narayan
I used the PC for 10 years and about 2... Tue 1 Mar 2005, 17:13 Narayan Hi Simmac,
Thanks for the encouragement. Still I a... Wed 2 Mar 2005, 18:17 citypigeon hi,
Its capturing the incoming analog audio thats... Wed 2 Mar 2005, 18:51 midnitremedy Hi my name is Jeremy (email midniteremedy@gmail.co... Thu 3 Mar 2005, 05:19 simmac Hi Narayan
So,if you don't work with audio re... Fri 4 Mar 2005, 01:05 Narayan Hi Simmac,
Thanks for clearing my doubts. Yes, I... Fri 4 Mar 2005, 09:08 simmac Hi Narayan
You are right.You know everything is p... Sat 5 Mar 2005, 11:32 GitGeezer 20-year Win-to-OSX switcher comments:
I switched ... Mon 7 Mar 2005, 08:16 cludinsk QUOTE Powerbook vs. G5: in 2 years my one-notch-un... Mon 7 Mar 2005, 21:26
GitGeezer Quite correct. When I bought the TiBook I decided... Tue 8 Mar 2005, 05:48 |
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