Aluminum PowerBooks

[iMpathetic]

Has anybody owned one? Are they good, laptop-wise? I've been looking at them for a long time but I'm not sure whether or not I should consolidate all my junk and buy one.
What i want to know is:
1) Do they get really hot?
2) Do they dent easily?
3) Assuming you have Leopard on it, does it run as fast as Tiger did?
4) How much could I expect to pay for, say, a lower-end one with 512MB RAM and Airport?
5) Would it be worth it? Are they (assume 1.5GHz) noticeably slower than a dual 800MHz Quicksilver?
Thanks everyone.
Ben

 

[pkoch1]

I am on a 15" PowerBook G4 1.67GHz 2GB RAM right now.

1. It gets too hot to put on your bare lap but if you are wearing pants you will be fine.
2. Mine slipped off of the couch one day and very slowly fell onto the power cord and dented that area. I also work in an apple tech support center and many many of the powerbooks i see are dented. (But it you are careful you will be fine. It has to drop to get dented)
3. Leopard runs faster than Tiger did by a noticeable amount.
4. not sure.
5. well it has .07MHz more than a dual 800MHz quicksilver but I doubt that is noticible and I'm not too sure on how having dual processors makes a difference.

Trust me on #1-3 but not on 4 or 5

Good luck!

 

[maccompaq]

I am on a 15" PowerBook G4 1.67GHz 2GB RAM right now.

1. It gets too hot to put on your bare lap but if you are wearing pants you will be fine.
2. Mine slipped off of the couch one day and very slowly fell onto the power cord and dented that area. I also work in an apple tech support center and many many of the powerbooks i see are dented. (But it you are careful you will be fine. It has to drop to get dented)
3. Leopard runs faster than Tiger did by a noticeable amount.
4. not sure.
5. well it has .07MHz more than a dual 800MHz quicksilver but I doubt that is noticible and I'm not too sure on how having dual processors makes a difference.

Trust me on #1-3 but not on 4 or 5

Good luck!

The dual 800 Mhz will run faster than the aluminum Powerbook with OSX since that OS is written to take advantage of dual processors.

 

[motulist]

1) Do they get really hot?

On automatic energy settings it gets warm, but not uncomfortable. But on highest energy settings they can get pretty hot after a while.

2) Do they dent easily?

Define easily. In normal use, they don't dent at all. But drop it from a foot or two and of course it'll dent. Mine fell off a chair seat height onto a hardwood floor. The casing was very slightly dented, but there was no damage to the machine itself, everything worked fine afterwards. (though the power cord connector was slightly damaged and didn't make a secure connection anymore, so I bought a new powercord and all was fine)

5) Would it be worth it? Are they as fast as a dual 800MHz Quicksilver?

Whether or not it's worth it depends on a lot of things. How cheap can you find it for? Do you need a laptop? Because a desktop will always give you more power for the same price. Which model were you looking at? The albooks, while all appearing the same on the outside, spanned several different model generations over several years.

Check the benchmarks to see how the power of different macs compare, because some albooks will be slower than the QS, and some will be faster.

Power Mac G4 (Quicksilver)Dual PowerPC G4 @ 800 MHz = 651 score

Last PowerBook G4 (15-inch 1.67/1.5 GHz) G4 @ 1.67 GHz = 1015 score

First PowerBook G4 (15-inch FW800) G4 @ 1000 MHz = 556 score

 

[jbg232]

For the most part, having one processor with the same speed as two 1/2 sized processors will be faster is regular usage. Most programs are written to only use one core or one processor and the OS interpolates that over two processors but there is a speed loss with this conversion and it doesn't work for everything. Thus, a 1.67 ghz processor will be noticeably faster than a dual 800mhz processor or even a dual 900 mhz processor for the most part. Remember, speed is not always what matters as a 3.0 ghz p4 is still much slower than a 2 ghz core 2 duo, the architecture is sometimes a key factor of the speed of the chip. Check out this site.

 

[iMpathetic]

I see. Perhaps I should rewrite #5 to say: "would I suffer any noticeable hit in performance?". In fact, I will now.

 

[motulist]

I see. Perhaps I should rewrite #5 to say: "would I suffer any noticeable hit in performance?". In fact, I will now.

To answer that question, as I pointed out above, you need to specify which model of albook you're thinking about because different albook models span a huge range of power levels.