Waiting for G5 PB or get G4: Pros/Cons

Hey 🙂

All of us seem to agree the G5 PB won't be out for quite some time.

Yes, you will be able to add Tiger to it when it comes out, and it'll run it beautifully.

The real question is: what do you want to do with your computer?

For MOST people, A G4 PB will be plenty of power.

P.S. There are a million topics on G5 PBs, G5 vs. G4, buy now or wait, and every combination of the three. Do a search and you'll be able to read about your same question for HOURS. 😉

rapps said:

I'm not going to be doing any graphics or gaming. Just research, typing, internet, music, and dvd burning.

Click to expand...

For those things, a PB G4 will "fly." 🙂 Bump the RAM up to 768MB or 1 GB (or as much as you can afford) and it'll be an even greater joy to own.

It already comes with 512 standard, so you'd only need to buy a 256 to get to 768 or a 512 to get to 1 GB.

rapps said:

I'm not going to be doing any graphics or gaming. Just research, typing, internet, music, and dvd burning.

Click to expand...

you have nearly zero reason to wait for the G5 PB. an iBook will suffice for that.

SteveC said:

It already comes with 512 standard, so you'd only need to buy a 256 to get to 768 or a 512 to get to 1 GB.

Click to expand...

the 512 that comes with the powerbook comes in two 256 mb chips. so you'd probably want to do the upgrade to 768 as its relatively inexpensive through apple. or you can wait (which is what i'm going to do...after i pick up a 12" pb on saturday) and upgrade to 1.25Gb in 6-8 months for 150.00 from fry's outpost.

my .02

Whoa another PB G4/G5 situation...this must be only a handful of thread asking the same old tired question. 🙄


Need a PB now, buy it. Don't need it don't buy it. Simple, NO. 😛 😉 🙂

I just decided that I will buy a PB G4. Why? Because the G5 is not going into the PB for a while and when it does, just imagine the heat issues the thing will have!

The PB is now in rev. D and pretty much all the kinks have been worked out.

I'm having the same sort of problem, and I don't want to start yet another thread...

I've been using Macs for a while (10.2+ era) but I've never really owned one. I wanted the PB G4 to be the first one I would buy, but last year I was insecure about my financial situation and ended up waiting for the next generation... and what do I get? Powerbook G4s, again, but now they're a bit outdated compared to the PC laptop world. Now more than ever I need a laptop for two main purposes:

1. Photoshop/Illustrator/Dreamweaver. I wonder how these would handle on the current Powerbook G4. Well, the macs I've used are old 400mhz G4s with Panther and it actually runs suprisingly well.
2. Programming... with the Terminal.

Sometimes I like to edit/capture video, but I haven't done it in a while so I'm not too worried about it, and besides I don't think I'll be able to get the superdrive edition. I'm getting the 15" combo drive.

I'm not sure what I'll be doing after this semester ends seeing as I'm graduating from college and working, but I'm definitely going back to graduate school in 2006 and I would then again need it.

I could also get a nice Windows-based equivalent-quality laptop (like a ThinkPad), which is faster and I can always install Linux and dual boot so I can program (because I am such a nerd), but that doesn't eliminate a little problem I like to call "Microsoft Windows". It seems that Photoshop/Illustrator/Dreamweaver work excently well on the Mac as opposed to Win where everything just look so damn cluttered... and slow. I seem to work a lot better in the mac with them, plus I don't have to dual boot to get on the terminal and get some serious work done without spending hours finding drivers to support every little thing of my laptop on linux, specially the wireless capability. And besides, then I wouldn't have a mac for a long time since I'll have two PCs (desktop and notebook).

Ultimately, I think the PBs right now are great because they're full of features and they' re definitely faster than any mac I've worked on... but what scares me is that tiny 167 mhz FSB. I'm afraid that by the time I go back to graduate school next year the computer will be too sluggish and old, and I would feel totally bad because I didn't wait six months for the new generation to finally come out.

Any advice from long time mac users? 🙂

netmonkey, you've seen this big ol' honkin' thread, I assume? Discusses in greater depth than usual many of the issues that concern you. There is also a thread from the release announcement of the rev. Ds.

In sum I think you'll find that if you need portability, for the tasks you mention the PB should not hold you back within the context of portable computing, especially with plenty of RAM and maybe a faster external HD for some of the video stuff. This is far from a scientific observation, but I've played around on a Thinkpad X40 (I'm pretty sure that's what model it was) recently, and it was not noticeably faster. True, I was not doing anything intensive, but the feel of it was not noticeably snappier, if at all, than my 1.33GHz G4. Really, I don't know, that's just how it felt; maybe try to play around with each one you're considering in advance of your purchase. And of course, on this board, Windows is usally considered more than a little problem ...