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G3 800 vs G3 900 iBooks - the differences

mrjamin

mrjamin

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Feb 6, 2003
1,161
1
Strongbadia
I got my new 900mhz iBook in place of the stolen 800mhz - its a VERY big improvement. Here are the differences i've appreciated:

Spec:
Original 800:
384mb ram
g3 900
combo
30gb hdd

new one:
640mb ram (doesn't really make it a fair comparison i guess)
g3 900
combo
40gb hdd

new casing is way better - much more hardwaring too. even if you do scratch it, it won't look too bad since you don't have the shadow you got on the translucent ones.

It feels way faster - i'm guessing this is due to the faster hdd and the maxed ram though. Boot time is significantly quicker.

the removal of the metal round the keyboard/trackpad was a good idea (despite the fact it doesn't quite look as classy) as it doesn't get so hot any more when you're doing more intensive stuff.

iTunes now rips cds at 8/9x as opposed to the 4/5x i got before (new combo drives + extra ram to thank)

burning cds is 100% faster, i burnt 600mb in about 4mins earlier

MASSIVE improvement on the OS performance, again probably due to the extra ram

it does boot into OS9 and had done since it arrived despite what people had said about it being osx only

could be a newer firmware fix, but i no longer get a sticky trackpad, nor do i get the spinning parasol for ages when waking it from sleep.

i have a feeling the screen's different too since the dotpitch appears to have improved

negatives:
battery life is definately shorter - i only get 3.5hrs tops on from charge with full screen brightness compared to the 4hrs i had before

doesn't quite look as classy - the removal of the metal must have been to distinguish it more from the 12"ers

the sleep light is way too bright now

any questions, let me know
 
What different types of casing have the white iBooks had? The pictures of iBooks all look the same from 500 MHz up. Which speeds have what casing? Thanks.
 
Nah, its probably not money. I think that people were complaining about the scratches being too visible on the translucent casing, so they went back to the solid white plastic casing.

And many of the improvements you experienced is probably due to the extra RAM, and the difference in battery life may be purely coincidence. Alot of people get different times on their batteries when they first get their laptops. Don't know why.
 
I want a firmware upgrade to bring my 800 up to 900, give me the faster combo drive, increase my hard drive space, and change the casing. Just like all those 2nd-gen iPod users who want an update to bring them up to 3rd-gen.

Yes this is just a joke :)
 
Originally posted by Nermal
I want a firmware upgrade to bring my 800 up to 900, give me the faster combo drive, increase my hard drive space, and change the casing. Just like all those 2nd-gen iPod users who want an update to bring them up to 3rd-gen.

Yes this is just a joke :)
Click to expand...

it's not the same thing at all, and I don't know why you bring it up here. If you were asking to be able to update your 800 mhz ibook to the 10.2.6 from 10.2.2 and apple refused to support 10.2.6 on your ibook, then that would be similar.
 
Your performance gains are likely to have nothing or little to do with the increased processor speed and everything to do with the increased system RAM. The system bus is still running at 100 MHz so even though the processor is chugging along at 900 MHz, it only gets data every ninth clock cycle. Very inefficient, although if its registers are large enough to keep the pipeline full, it's all good (I don't know much about the registers on a G3)
 
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