iBook Question

[powder8]

So I am going to buy a new iBook... But I am having a hard time making my decision on what model to buy... I am going to get a 14" for sure... but what I really can't decide is if I should get a new iBook or a previous generation.... This iBook will be used mainly for e-mail & surfing at work... No heavy use, my Power Mac is for that. I know what options are important to me and what they mean in terms of performance with the exception of the L2 cache... what the hell does a L2 cache just exactly do? What type of applications will benifit the most from the new 512k L2 cache? For just e-mail & surfing is it worth the money to get a new generation iBook?

Thanks!

[brhmac]

http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Level%202%20cache

[adamjay]

any media applications will benefit alot with the doubled L2 cache.
iPhoto, iVideo, Garageband, etc. Gaming as well.

also Safari cache's alot of images so your webpages load faster.

also, the new ibooks have the ATA-100 hard drive controller (the old with ATA-66).. it doesnt make a HUGE difference on 4200rpm drives, but it will help a little when copying and moving files around on your hard drive.

to put the cache issue into perspective... the first 400mhz Titanium powerbooks had 1MB L2 cache. the next revision of 550mhz and 667mhz powerbooks had 256k L2 cache. Professional users, and many benchmark tests were reporting the 400mhz to be faster than the 550mhz and just AS fast as the 667mhz in several media applications. Cache is very important, and i was impressed to see the new iBooks adopting a much larger cache.. because this bridges the gap even more between the ibooks and powerbooks, thus making the new iBook a better value than it ever has been before.

[musicpyrite]

About the L2 cache:
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=68514
(Look familiar? You posted it, it's not every day that we get 2 questions about L cache)