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-- Apple's new iBook! (http://discussion.visorcentral.com/vcforum/showthread.php?threadid=14581)

Check it out!

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My blog: Pocketfactory

As someone who loathed the design of the original iBook (John Dvorak was too kind, IMO), I love this new version -- simple, elegant. Thank you, Steve, for getting a clue.

The brother (or sister) of the PB 2400. Small, durable and packed full of power. They seemed to have addressed all the issues with the old iBooks, except the 66 MHz bus, and improved the design tremendously. Great job Apple! If I ever get a laptop this will be the one for me!

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Originally posted by Gameboy70
(John Dvorak was too kind, IMO)

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My blog: Pocketfactory

I actually liked the old iBook. Although I like this one much better.

iBooks

The blueberry iBook (or which I have two) is one of the best values and most aesthetically pleasing computers I've ever owned. That said, the new iBooks are incredible. Apple hit another home run.

The current color is simply "form a." More to come.

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When I get a little money I buy books; if any is left, I buy food and clothes.

I like it. Now if only Apple would release an OS X update that fixed the volume controls and battery life on their notebooks.

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James Hromadka
Old Friend

I'm curious why someone would pay the extra for the powerbook when the top of the line iBook seems to everything and more that the PowerBook does at a fraction of the cost (too many late-night infomercials - must be catching up to me).

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-Joshua
Abortion: Darwinism at its finest.

G4 instead of G3 processor
1MB backside cache
100MHz system bus
More base memory
2 SODIMM slots
Bigger HDs available
PC card slot
Bigger screen
Thinner

I might've missed something as usual.

Because size does matter

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Originally posted by dick-richardson
I'm curious why someone would pay the extra for the powerbook when the top of the line iBook seems to everything and more that the PowerBook does at a fraction of the cost (too many late-night infomercials - must be catching up to me).

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James Hromadka
Old Friend

quote:

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Originally posted by dalamar70
G4 instead of G3 processor

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1MB backside cache

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100MHz system bus

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More base memory
2 SODIMM slots
Bigger HDs available
PC card slot
Bigger screen
Thinner

I might've missed something as usual.

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__________________
-Joshua
Abortion: Darwinism at its finest.

Re: Because size does matter

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Originally posted by JHromadka
Two words: screen size. My TiBook's 15.1" screen is physically wider than my Dell 17" monitor and is soooo clear and crisp. Sometimes I turn on the visuals in iTunes just to watch the graphical goodness. ...

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-Joshua
Abortion: Darwinism at its finest.

Screen size is EVERYTHING. I always tell people to pick out a monitor first, and THEN pick out a computer. So many people blow their budget on a great machine only to use a crappy monitor. Ugh.

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I've always meant to ask, what's the difference between the G3 and G4?

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What does the backside cache do?

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And this is how fast info gets passed from the RAM to the processor, correct?

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We're all naked if you turn us inside out.
-David Byrne

Thanks, homer.

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-Joshua
Abortion: Darwinism at its finest.

The main difference between a G3 and G4 is the added Alti-Vec unit on the G4. It is an extra little floating point unit that speeds up programs that are written for it and would benefit from it- mostly the high end graphics apps (Photoshop, MediaCleaner, Cinema 4d etc.), which is why it is in the "professional" computers versus the iMac and iBooks. SoundJam uses it to speed encoding of MP3's and there is supposed to be a Quake 3 Arena update that takes advantage of it, but overall it isn't as common in consumer apps.

That said, I think the G4 performs slightly better than a G3 even when not using an Alti-Vec enabled app.

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I think the G4 uses a 128 bit architecture as opposed to 32 bit for the G3

The bus is used for data transfers between CPU, memory, peripherals, etc., so overall a faster bus is better. New PCs have 100-133MHz buses with tricks to speed it up (dunno if the Macs do too).

Probably the most frequent transfers are from the CPU to main memory. A cache is a special small (32KB-1MB) memory that can be accessed much faster than main memory. It seems like the Ti Powerbook G4 has a larger but slower (external) cache than the new iBooks. I don't know which would work out better in practice, but new Pentium III and Athlons all go with the faster internal caches.

Altivec the equivalent of Intel's MMX/SSE/SSE2 extensions, which means it can process a bunch of numbers at the same time. Just like SSE, properly written applications that need this capability will run a lot faster (mostly multimedia stuff like Lennonhead said).

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Originally posted by dalamar70
New PCs have 100-133MHz buses with tricks to speed it up (dunno if the Macs do too).

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My blog: Pocketfactory

From http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1006-200-5789050.html

"Apple asserts it is off to a good start, having signed the industry's biggest education laptop deal ever. The Henrico County Public Schools in Richmond, Va., has agreed to buy 23,000 of the new iBooks. "

Wow. Nice work, Apple.

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We're all naked if you turn us inside out.
-David Byrne

It's good to see Steve Jobs isn't just a sex-crazed computer geek. He's also interested in teaching our children.


Wait a minute.....

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-Joshua
Abortion: Darwinism at its finest.