Is this a downgrade or an upgrade?

[thouts]

I've got someone who is willing to buy my 15" PowerBook G4 1.5 Ghz/2GB RAM/80G HDD for $750. Orig. price somewhere around $2800. At first I was not interested in selling at all but then thought that for a couple hundred dollars I could get a MacBook. Main progams I use are Photoshop, Illustrator and Dreamweaver CS3. I would also be interested in video editing w/ final cut and/or iMovie. Biggest downfall I see is that with the low end macbook you cannot burn to DVD am I missing anything else? This would be my only computer. Also thinking about not buying til the next MB comes out possibly at a lower price/more features. Any thoughts/ideas?

Thanks in advance!

 

[TEG]

The MacBook does not have a dedicated video card, so if you are going to play games, the G4, may be a better choice. And in reality Adobe CS3 products will work fine on a G4, but iMovie and FCE/FCP would be better on even a MacBook, as they are not dependent on the video card, but the CPU.

TEG

 

[aristobrat]

The video card in the MacBook is integrated, which isn't powerful as the dedicated video card in your PowerBook. That might affect video editing a little. I've seen the iMovie demo in the Apple Store playback choppy (in full screen) sometimes on the MacBooks but the exact same demo is very smooth on the MacBook Pros. This was just while playing back from within iMovie -- if you exported the movie to a QuickTime file, it played perfectly on both.

I think you're wise to wait and see what's in store for the rumored new MacBooks.

I was amazed when I went from my 1.5GHz PB to the original MacBook (from two years ago). It was soooooo much faster. It's going to even better for you (as the current/next gen MacBooks are so much faster than the original MacBooks!)

 

[cantthinkofone]

Thats a tough decision.

The macbook will be faster than the G4, but like TEG said, the G4 has a dedicated video card.

You might take a look at the digital video, and digital photography threads to see how people like the macbook for those needs.

I'm not sure if any of those programs are programmed to take advantage of intel architecture or not. If they are it might even out.

You could always just load the macbook out with ram to get as much out of the video as possible.

I play HL 2 with 2GB of ram on a 2.4 macbook running leopard.

 

[Abstract]

For CS3 apps, the MacBook will be much better.

For Final Cut, etc? Not sure, but I'd still put my money on the MacBook. Just because a computer came with a graphics card doesn't mean anything if key technology required to run an app well is missing. The integrated graphics on the MacBook today is certainly better than the graphics card on the old 12" PowerBooks, and may even be better than the graphic cards on the 15" and 17" PBs.


Also, if you wait for the new MacBook, the integrated graphics will be improved once again. I'd wait just for that.

 

[nick9191]

Macbook graphics outperform Powerbook graphics.

The Macbook graphics are integrated, which means the speed of them is dependent on your system speed. A Macbook with the RAM bumped up to 4gb will outperform the powerbook, graphics wise on most tasks, and the CPU will be immensely more powerful.

 

[aleksandra.]

Switching to MacBook you'll also have only 13" screen, so you might need an external display unless you're fine editing movies on it. It'll be probably much faster, as others already said.