TiBook 400 vs ibook 600

[ChrisBoven]

I just sold my little ibook g3 600 and picked up a tibook 400 (I've always wanted one of these )

400 mhz G4
512 ram
60 gb hd
Airport card
$310 (not a bad deal i thought)


My question is if both have the same ram, which one is faster? Does the the g4 make up for the small mhz difference. Just curious. Also, how bad is the airport signal reception on the tibooks that i've heard so much about, and will this machine be able to run tiger well?

-Chris

 

[Super Macho Man]

The G3 will "feel" faster and will outperform the G4 significantly for general purpose duties. The G4 will be faster with apps that make use of AltiVec, like iTunes encoding, some media encoding, iDVD (which won't run on a G3), and... not too much else.

The rev A TiBooks did not get good AirPort range, but that can be remedied with a PCMCIA wireless card.

You may have downgraded CPU-wise. I have a 550MHz TiBook running Tiger, and it's usable for me but unpleasant. I would not want to have a 400MHz G4, it would be useless to me for anything beyond web browsing and email - and even for web browsing it would choke to death on Flash and WMV. The 400MHz G4 was cutting edge in 1999, but nowadays 400MHz on a 100MHz bus is like torture. (my opinion)

 

[Jschultz]

Dude, I had one of the original 400 mhz TiBooks, and I miss it all the time!!

Once you get a PCMCIA card, it will get great range for airport. So yeah. Good deal you got too. I had 10.4 on mine, and it was great for general purpose stuff, such as web use, iTunes, and MS office.

 

[Plymouthbreezer]

My TiBook runs Tiger fine, but I couldn't use it as my main unit. Still fine for portable web browsing/chat/e-mail and basic media needs.

 

[ricgnzlzcr]

I think you made a good decision. I've lusted over a tibook since I first started using macs and now im typing on one. All I need is to replace the airport card with a pcmcia wi-fi card and get a usb 2.0 card as well. I have the 1 ghz version and it's been amazing. I think you got a very nice price on yours. Enjoy going titanium.

 

[California]

Funny question because I had both machines at the same time in 2002.

The Tibooks didn't come out until 2001, btw.

I actually went back to a VGA Tibook 667 because I miss my old 400mhz so much.

As for speed, if you put 1 gig of ram in there and GET A FASTER HARD DRIVE, the 400 Tibook will be fine. My old one went to Daystar and got a 550mzh CPU upgrade and then I sold it to a friend. Great machine, and still under Daystar warranty.

Get the memory upgrade. and get a 7200 rpm hard drive. I have a 100gig 7200 rpm Travelstar in this 667 plus one gig of memory, runs fine.

Regular internal airport is fine for me but I just sold my external wifi card to another friend with a 550 Tibook upgraded by Daystar (former 500mhz machine). She might want to swap you for the airport because she is not using it right now, I don't know.

Oh, and I down graded from a 1ghz Tibook and a 1.42ghz iBook because I love the screen size of the Ti's and actually need the lower res screen (non DVI screen) because of my aging eyes and eyesight. The 14" ibook, while a GREAT machine, just wasn't as cool as the wide 15" Tibook screen.

I am actually thinking of doing the Daystar CPU upgrade to this 667mhz to 1.2ghz, which would be great.

 

[California]

I think you made a good decision. I've lusted over a tibook since I first started using macs and now im typing on one. All I need is to replace the airport card with a pcmcia wi-fi card and get a usb 2.0 card as well. I have the 1 ghz version and it's been amazing. I think you got a very nice price on yours. Enjoy going titanium.

HI Ricgnzlzcr -- btw did you do that thing on getting "owned" it was great

 

[ricgnzlzcr]

HI Ricgnzlzcr -- btw did you do that thing on getting "owned" it was great

Haha, I don't understand the question Cali. PM if you're still curious on whatever it is you're talking about

 

[dextertangocci]

I know a graphics designer, who up until about a month ago still used his 400Mhz tiBook running tiger for heavy photoshop use, and he was fine with it

 

[Xeem]

The G4's Altivec should make it perform better in many tasks, but DIVX/XVID playback in VLC is the main one for me. .avi files that ran smoothly via mirrored display on my old 400mHz TiBook w/384 MB RAM stutter significantly on my 500 mHz iMac G3 w/512 MB RAM. Both machines have an 8MB Rage Pro.

 

[ChrisBoven]

This is by no means going to be my main machine, i basically just bought it for novel use. (to tug around campus and not care too much if it gets banged up).

However, i don't think i want a PCMCIA card like you guys mentioned, because they protrude out the side. Is there any other alternative? Also there is a small dent on the lid, is there any way to take that out?