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foo fighter
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Registered: Oct 1999
Location: I'm not sure, but I see lots of lights everywhere.
Posts: 1287

Check it out!

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05-01-2001 07:27 PM

Gameboy70
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Registered: Oct 1999
Location: Metro Station, Hollywood and Highland
Posts: 1018

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.

05-01-2001 08:58 PM

lennonhead
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Registered: Mar 2000
Location: NJ
Posts: 517

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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05-01-2001 09:00 PM

foo fighter
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Registered: Oct 1999
Location: I'm not sure, but I see lots of lights everywhere.
Posts: 1287

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

Dvorak hit the nail on the head. The thing did look like a toilet seat!

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05-01-2001 09:06 PM

creole
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Registered: Mar 2001
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Posts: 347

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

05-01-2001 10:36 PM

Potus
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Registered: Feb 2001
Location:
Posts: 138

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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05-02-2001 01:56 AM

JHromadka
VisorCentral Staff

Registered: Sep 1999
Location: Texan in Calgary for a while
Posts: 1361

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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05-02-2001 04:30 AM

dick-richardson
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Registered: Oct 2000
Location: Aberdeen, SD
Posts: 2531

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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05-02-2001 06:35 AM

dalamar70
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Registered: Mar 2001
Location: Champaign, IL
Posts: 200

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.

05-02-2001 09:33 AM

JHromadka
VisorCentral Staff

Registered: Sep 1999
Location: Texan in Calgary for a while
Posts: 1361

Because size does matter

quote:
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).

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.

Dalamar70 mentioned the other extras, but the screen really makes a difference. Not to say that the new iBook isn't nice; I plan on talking my family into getting one.

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05-02-2001 03:43 PM

dick-richardson
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Registered: Oct 2000
Location: Aberdeen, SD
Posts: 2531

quote:
Originally posted by dalamar70
G4 instead of G3 processor

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

quote:
1MB backside cache

What does the backside cache do?

quote:
100MHz system bus

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

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

I might've missed something as usual.

Thanks for break-down! I was going to point out the titanium case in my original post, but forgot. It was pretty late.

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Abortion: Darwinism at its finest.

05-02-2001 04:07 PM

dick-richardson
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Registered: Oct 2000
Location: Aberdeen, SD
Posts: 2531

Re: Because size does matter

quote:
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. ...

It makes that much difference? I guess it makes sense. I've always found that the extras make the product as much (or more) than the base stats. The edge wouldn't be nearly the product it is w/o the silent alarm and fast-lookup, IMO.

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05-02-2001 04:15 PM

homer
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Registered: Jan 2000
Location: Twin Cities, MN
Posts: 1683

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.

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

The architecture is different, which means a same-MHZ G3 and G4 are NOT the same speed (the G4 would be faster).

quote:
What does the backside cache do?

It is sort of a Processor-helper. It is connected to the processor, so it is able to swap data with the processor directly.

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

The BUS is basically the speed limit of the system. The faster the speed limit, the more traffic can pass through in a given amount of time.

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05-02-2001 05:18 PM

dick-richardson
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Registered: Oct 2000
Location: Aberdeen, SD
Posts: 2531

Thanks, homer.

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05-02-2001 05:20 PM

lennonhead
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Registered: Mar 2000
Location: NJ
Posts: 517

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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05-02-2001 06:25 PM

creole
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Registered: Mar 2001
Location:
Posts: 347

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

05-02-2001 08:47 PM

dalamar70
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Registered: Mar 2001
Location: Champaign, IL
Posts: 200

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).

05-02-2001 09:18 PM

foo fighter
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Registered: Oct 1999
Location: I'm not sure, but I see lots of lights everywhere.
Posts: 1287

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

Actually, PCs have bus speeds going up to 200mhz (Athlon) -400mhz (Pentium 4). There really is no excuse at all for Apple not to increase bus speeds on all their products!

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05-02-2001 09:24 PM

homer
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Registered: Jan 2000
Location: Twin Cities, MN
Posts: 1683

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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05-02-2001 09:56 PM