 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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Tue 8 Mar 2005, 05:48
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Newbie Group: Members Posts: 17 Joined: 01-May 04 From: Coeur D'Alene - US Member No.: 42,280 |
Quite correct. When I bought the TiBook I decided to save a little by going down from 800 to 667. Probably a bad habit from the PC world where memory gets the budget instead of processor speed. I would also reccomend the AppleCare extended warranty. Again, I wanted to save $300. The aluminum cases are a much better idea. I have a client that actually draws on his. Add some dents & dings and it begins to take on an indestructible personality.
Problems with Live 4.1 (Live 2 seemed to be a little more robust) include glitching with just a few loops and one or two recorded audio tracks. Reverb as an insert effect stops it cold. The effect bus approach works, however. Absynth 3 may be ok but it sounds like it might be gently glitching also. CPU maxes out on many of the factory presets. I'm now seeing minimum requirements for almost all Mac software and hardware at 800Mhz G4, G5 or dual G5 preferred. So, to keep the hardware current with software will probably cost $1000 to $1500 per year at $3000 to $4000 for a new computer every three years. Time to add a new budget entry... -------------------- Quad G5, 4 gig memory, internal and external drives, MOTU Traveler, Logic Pro 7.1.1, Sibelius, Reaktor 5, Absynth 3, Live 5, OS X 4.4
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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 jeffca The biggest reason you buy an Apple laptop is buil... Sat 5 Feb 2005, 05:50 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
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