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1.92ghz PowerBook G4 Upgrade - Worth it?

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Sam0r

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 15, 2005
199
0
Birmingham, UK
I've been contemplating buying a macbook, but I just found out Daystar can upgrade my powerbook (1ghz G4 Aluminium) to 1.92 ghz for £301 including international shipping.

Has anyone done this? Is it worth it?

Does anyone know of any side effects? Their FAQ says that power requirements are a little higher, but not much. And also there isn't much more heat given off by the upgraded processor.
 
S

Sam0r

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 15, 2005
199
0
Birmingham, UK
iW00t said:
For that price I rather buy a refurb Macbook.

That is almost 600 US dollars!
Click to expand...

Yep, but in the UK, a macbook costs around £700 which is £400 more than the upgrade.

Plus I get to keep the graphics, bigger screen and higher resolution.

Edit:

Correction, for the 1gb model, its £879.
 
liketom

liketom

macrumors 601
Apr 8, 2004
4,190
66
Lincoln,UK
Sam0r said:
Yep, but in the UK, a macbook costs around £700 which is £400 more than the upgrade.

Plus I get to keep the graphics, bigger screen and higher resolution.

Edit:

Correction, for the 1gb model, its £879.
Click to expand...

but a brighter screen and i'm betting a faster cpu with the macbook also -isight

and it will not warp like the powerbook :)
 
S

Sam0r

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 15, 2005
199
0
Birmingham, UK
liketom said:
but a brighter screen and i'm betting a faster cpu with the macbook also -isight

and it will not warp like the powerbook :)
Click to expand...

It won't warp? :confused:

I've no interest in an iSight built in, I don't like the idea of there ALWAYS being a webcam there watching me, it sort of freaks me out.

I don't really care about the screen brightness, its fine as it is, and anyway I'd much rather the higher resolution.
 
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NewSc2

macrumors 65816
Jun 4, 2005
1,044
2
New York, NY
Personally I'd get a Macbook. If you're looking for a speed increase.. the G4's feel like a really old CPU to me whenever I use my gf's iBook (used to have a PB myself). I really doubt a speed bump would do much, seeing as how many programs coming out are optimized for Intel chips.

Iono about you, but in the states a refurb CD Macbook can go for about $900. How are refurb prices in the UK?

If you pick up a Macbook you have the luxury of having two laptops -- you could continue to use both or sell your PB.
 
S

Sam0r

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 15, 2005
199
0
Birmingham, UK
NewSc2 said:
Personally I'd get a Macbook. If you're looking for a speed increase.. the G4's feel like a really old CPU to me whenever I use my gf's iBook (used to have a PB myself). I really doubt a speed bump would do much, seeing as how many programs coming out are optimized for Intel chips.

Iono about you, but in the states a refurb CD Macbook can go for about $900. How are refurb prices in the UK?

If you pick up a Macbook you have the luxury of having two laptops -- you could continue to use both or sell your PB.
Click to expand...

I'd love a macbook, but I can't justify the price.

Over here a Macbook with 1gb of ram, 2ghz C2D is $879, which is $1733.74, over 3x the price of the upgrade.
 
MRU

MRU

macrumors Penryn
Aug 23, 2005
25,368
8,948
a better place
Nice upgrade. What is their policy on screwups ? If they destroy your PB during upgrade, do you have any comeback from them ?

That would be my biggest worry.

Besides you could sell your PB for £400 + the cost of the upgrade £400 and your nearly their for the price of the new MacBook - which you get another years waranty and piece of mind.

I'd prefer the 2ghz powerbook personally though ;)
 
K

Kissaragi

macrumors 68020
Nov 16, 2006
2,340
370
Your powerbook would get £500 easily on ebay (assuming its in good condition) add that to your £300 and bam! (too much futurama) you have a macbook.
 
S

Sam0r

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 15, 2005
199
0
Birmingham, UK
Well, I have no use for classic, I bought this Powerbook for £400 a while back.

Its not exactly in great shape, although I'm going to buy a new bottom for it, theres dents all over it, and theres a key missing.

I don't really want to sell it though, I don't NEED a powerfull laptop, but I want something a bit more powerfull than 1ghz.

I do a lot of web design, and even though photoshop is universal now, dreamweaver and flash aren't, and there doesn't seem to be any sign that they will be universal any time soon.

As far as their policy on screwups is conserned, I'd expect that if in the event of a screwup, they'd repair the damage.

Oh and the coolness factor to having a 1.92 ghz powerbook is pretty high ;)

Although, I've read that the 1.92 ghz upgrade causes problems, however the 1.75ghz upgrade is fine, so I might opt for the 1.75 ghz upgrade instead, although I'll talk to them about it.
 
Lord Blackadder

Lord Blackadder

macrumors P6
May 7, 2004
15,669
5,499
Sod off
I say go for it. I haven't yet heard from anyone who bought this upgrade, but Barefeats did a benchmark of this upgrade in both an iMac G4 and PowerBook G4, and both showed very nice performance improvements, although the MacBook is still significantly faster.
 
D

daystartech

macrumors newbie
Jan 17, 2005
8
0
MacRumorUser said:
Nice upgrade. What is their policy on screwups ? If they destroy your PB during upgrade, do you have any comeback from them ?
Click to expand...

Daystar fully warranties the upgrade and the logic board from any "srewups". Although accidents can happen, Daystar takes the cost not the user.

The upgrade is a pretty straight forward process (in engineering terms), it simply uses the fastest available 7447A CPUs. The boost is noticeable. As most people realize that the UI heavy Mac OS interface is always starved for more CPU power.

Daystar has completed more than 10,000 of these types of upgrades, and is the only company to master the process. You can feel safe.
 
QCassidy352

QCassidy352

macrumors G5
Mar 20, 2003
12,028
6,036
Bay Area
it'll certainly give your powerbook a new lease on life, but for how long? it's still a G4. Meaning it's an incremental upgrade. Nothing to sneeze at, but that's a lot of money to still be 3 processor generations old (G5, CD, C2D).
 
S

Sam0r

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 15, 2005
199
0
Birmingham, UK
daystartech said:
Daystar fully warranties the upgrade and the logic board from any "srewups". Although accidents can happen, Daystar takes the cost not the user.

The upgrade is a pretty straight forward process (in engineering terms), it simply uses the fastest available 7447A CPUs. The boost is noticeable. As most people realize that the UI heavy Mac OS interface is always starved for more CPU power.

Daystar has completed more than 10,000 of these types of upgrades, and is the only company to master the process. You can feel safe.
Click to expand...

Assuming you work for daystar (Gary?) what can you say about the XLR8 reports on the 1.92ghz upgrades?

Link: http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/G4CARDS/daystar_1.92GHz_PB_G4.html
 
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NewSc2

macrumors 65816
Jun 4, 2005
1,044
2
New York, NY
Well, not only that, you're only only upgrading the CPU and nothing else. What's your GPU? Did the G4 undergo any chipset upgrades? Hard drive speed? Superdrive? etc.
 
S

Sam0r

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 15, 2005
199
0
Birmingham, UK
NewSc2 said:
Well, not only that, you're only only upgrading the CPU and nothing else. What's your GPU? Did the G4 undergo any chipset upgrades? Hard drive speed? Superdrive? etc.
Click to expand...

Radeon 9600 Mobile 64mb, don't need anything better.

I've got a Hitachi deskstar 7k100 100gb in it and its really nice and fast.

Don't need a superdrive either, I've got an external dvd burner I use.
 
Lord Blackadder

Lord Blackadder

macrumors P6
May 7, 2004
15,669
5,499
Sod off
A new, faster hard drive would complement a CPU upgrade well.

It just is not possible to upgrade just a chipset. In the PC world that means a motherboard upgrade at minimum(often including a CPU/RAM upgrade), in the Mac world it pretty much means a whole new Mac.
 
ktbubster

ktbubster

macrumors 6502a
Jan 20, 2007
794
1
US
am I missing something?

I agree with most people here and would recommend you selling your powerbook for whatever you can get for it and putting the upgrade money into a new/newer macbook or macbook pro.

I said "am i missing something?" because I was just curious can't you find a first run of macbook pros on ebay that will ship to the uk for more normal price of 1000-1200 US? So about 5 or 600?

Even first fun of a macbook pro used, still with some apple care would insure a year or 2 of warranty, the higher resolution and atleast 1.83ghx in speed with intel, which would be very useful when your new programs do upgrade, and would allow you to get bootcamp or parallels and run any cool computer graphics programs or 3d stuff or get random brush attachments that maybe you could only have on windows?

That would be my suggestion. Ebay a lightly used computer that still has some applecare and only end up paying a little bit more after selling.

(ps if it's missing a key just get a replacement keyboard and replace the keys, that's a tiny investment plus teh new case before selling... even broken powerbook g4s go for good prices here)

I think this option would give you more for your money and keep you from having to upgrade any time soon or worry about 3rd party companies accidently messing up your computer.
 
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