I am planning to buy a ibook and need some advices. Someone is offering me a G3 900 12 inches with 2 more years of applecare warranty and a couple of hundred lower than the G4 800, 12 inches. The spec seems to be the same except for the processor. Is the G4 really much superior?
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ibook G3 900 vs G4 800
- Thread starter raindeer
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All other things being equal, the g4 is pettty superior to the g3. But for general web brosing, email, word processing, etc, the g3 is probably the better deal at a couple hundred less.
it depends...
on what you are doing...if all you use the computer for is surfing the web and email, you won't notice much speed difference. But, if you are watching DVDs, using IPhoto, GarageBand or other CPU intensive applications, you'll notice a BIG difference, mostly due to the altivec unit in the G4. IPhoto scroll times will be orders of magnitude faster, and GarageBand is mostly unusable on a G3. Some fast action DVDs you will notice alot of pixelization on the G3, assuming it even has a DVD-ROM. If it were my money, I'd go for the G4.
on what you are doing...if all you use the computer for is surfing the web and email, you won't notice much speed difference. But, if you are watching DVDs, using IPhoto, GarageBand or other CPU intensive applications, you'll notice a BIG difference, mostly due to the altivec unit in the G4. IPhoto scroll times will be orders of magnitude faster, and GarageBand is mostly unusable on a G3. Some fast action DVDs you will notice alot of pixelization on the G3, assuming it even has a DVD-ROM. If it were my money, I'd go for the G4.
You can get a refurbished G4 at the Apple Store for $850. That is a pretty good deal!!!raindeer said:
iBook G4 800MHz/256MB/30GB/Combo/E/56K/ 12" TFT-Refurbished $849.00
Unless you could get the 900 MHz G3 for about $500 (which you probably couldn't), I wouldn't even think about it.
cait-sith said:
The ram max on the iBook G4 800 was actually 1152 megs (1 gig DDR SO-DIMM + the 128 soldered on). It's 1280 megs in the new one because of the 256 soldered on (in place of the old 128). Apple always claimed that the iBook only supported 640, but this was false (since 1 gig SO-DIMMs do exist, do fit, and are properly recognized).