PowerBook G4 or MacBook?

garirry said:

I recently posted a thread asking if I should buy an iBook Clamshell, iBook G4 or PowerBook G4. Everyone said to pick up the PBG4.

Now, I thought, should I spend more money on an Intel MacBook with Snow Leopard, with better app compatibility, or should I just spend less for an older computer to run Leopard? Besides, I already have an G4 iMac that I will put Leopard on this thing, so, two different kinds may be better.

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You will soon need to upgrade to Intel. So why not now. Once you are in Intel family, you have better chances of upgrade and compatibility.

Thanks.

To be honest, I'm seeing signs of Snow Leopard's demise from being officially supported. So if the MacBook cannot run 10.7, it's going to wind up in the same boat as the G4 PowerBooks.

If you get an Intel MacBook, make doubly sure that it can run Mac OS 10.7. That would only exclude the original MacBooks and the MacBook Pros that were not Core2Duos (there are a few models of those ones, so check it out before anything else).

In 2013, you should buy the MacBook. Fact is 10.6 has far better support from 3rd party developers as well as Apple, and thats really important if you want any new iToys (iPhone 5, iPods and iPads.)

I recommend a macbook pro and not a macbook oh god no. at least the macbook pros had up to 4 gigs of ram and a much better graphics card. If you buy a macbook pro now get a core 2 duo and dual boot mountain lion and windows 7. Check out hackerwaynes tutorial to find out how to get mountain lion on one. If all you do is very light gaming/web browsing/photoshop a late 2006/early 2007 macbook pro can still be used for a good 2 years.

Lil Chillbil said:

I recommend a macbook pro and not a macbook oh god no. at least the macbook pros had up to 4 gigs of ram and a much better graphics card. If you buy a macbook pro now get a core 2 duo and dual boot mountain lion and windows 7. Check out hackerwaynes tutorial to find out how to get mountain lion on one. If all you do is very light gaming/web browsing/photoshop a late 2006/early 2007 macbook pro can still be used for a good 2 years.

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If you want a MBP with support for 4GB of RAM, you've gotta land a mid-late 2007 model with the known faulty GeForce 8600M GT. Not only do you risk a graphics chip failure, you're also looking at paying more than you would for a 2006 or early 07 MacBook Pro, which would be A LOT more than you're going to be spending on any G3 or G4 system. Idk what his budget is for this system, but if he can get his hands on a C2D machine, its a good call. My 2007 2.16 MBP is still my newest Mac, and its held up to the task just fine cept for the battery which has started to slip over the last few months.

Get a macbook! or a pro whatever I don't mind my 2 macbook's with the one exception that neither would run if I wasn't skilled in repairs.I just got BIG into apple about a year ago and bought a powerbook I liked it and got another powerbook then I was held back by compatibility so got a macbook and it just went on and on.I still have one of the powerbooks which I can say is a darn good machine but so you can pull years out of it get a macbook/pro.My 08 penryn MacBooks both run 10.7 and have 4gb or ram and I got one for $75 and repaired an inverter (known problem) and the other for $110 which needed case repairs.

garirry said:

Thanks for the advice everyone.

BUT PLEASE, ANSWER ME THIS:
If I upgrade my 1.25GHz iMac G4 512MB of RAM to 1.5GB, will it run Leopard AS SMOOTH as Tiger was?

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Not really, IMO. My eMac was a dog with Leopard and 512 MB RAM, but did just fine with Tiger. When I upped it to 1.5 GB, Leopard was certainly a much better experience than it had been - it was usable from a decent perspective. But Tiger absolutely FLEW in comparison.

These G4's, they'll certainly run Leopard without much complaint - but Tiger is what they were built for, and what they do best.

garirry said:

Thanks for the advice everyone.

BUT PLEASE, ANSWER ME THIS:
If I upgrade my 1.25GHz iMac G4 512MB of RAM to 1.5GB, will it run Leopard AS SMOOTH as Tiger was?

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I run it on a 733 MHz G4 tower with 1.5 GB of RAM. It runs it respectably, but my dual 1.8 GHz G5 tower runs it wonderfully.

garirry said:

Thanks for the advice everyone.

BUT PLEASE, ANSWER ME THIS:
If I upgrade my 1.25GHz iMac G4 512MB of RAM to 1.5GB, will it run Leopard AS SMOOTH as Tiger was?

Click to expand...

IMHO, no. Better, but not as smoothly.
10.4 for G4; 10.5 for G5 - a good rule of thumb is you ask me.

RGDS,

garirry said:

BUT PLEASE, ANSWER ME THIS:
If I upgrade my 1.25GHz iMac G4 512MB of RAM to 1.5GB, will it run Leopard AS SMOOTH as Tiger was?

Click to expand...

I run 10.5 on my iBook G4 1.33GHZ, 1GB RAM and it runs smoothly. My iBook G3 is running Tiger with 800MHZ and 384 RAM, it also runs smoothly. Either one will likely be fine, IMO.

**Edit: I just added more RAM to the G3 and it runs better, but as noted even with less RAM as written above it was running fine on Tiger**

garirry said:

Thanks for the advice everyone.

BUT PLEASE, ANSWER ME THIS:
If I upgrade my 1.25GHz iMac G4 512MB of RAM to 1.5GB, will it run Leopard AS SMOOTH as Tiger was?

Click to expand...

I'm running Leopard on the same hardware as that but with 768mb of ram and it has the 17" screen. I received it with Panther but installed Leopard and, if anything, the performance has improved IMO.

I'd say go for it because the most important thing for Leopard is a CI and a QE capable GPU, which this machine has. Leopard has improved over it's iterations so it's as fast as Tiger if not a bit faster or slower. Anyway, the features and application support on Leopard compared to previous OS X releases more than makes up for the disadvantages.

Linux is also another option but I think it has problems with these iMacs but I'd have to check that to be sure.

garirry said:

Thanks for the advice everyone.

BUT PLEASE, ANSWER ME THIS:
If I upgrade my 1.25GHz iMac G4 512MB of RAM to 1.5GB, will it run Leopard AS SMOOTH as Tiger was?

Click to expand...

I think that's a bad question to ask because I would not go back to Tiger unless I had to. I am running Leopard on my mid 2005 iBook G4 1.33GHz 1.5GB RAM and it is great. Leopard is really the minimum point for various software and for hardware accessories now. You also get better memory management(in my opinion). Go with Leopard.