Macbook Pro vs Desktop PC running Tiger?

[skuliaxe]

My wife, as a Graphic designer, uses her Macbook Pro (Intel 2.16 Intel C2D and 2Gb ram) for all her work. Lately her computer has been a little slow and the fan running at full speeds most of the time (graphic design applications demand cpu load).

I was wondering if I could rather buy some parts for my old desktop and have her use that instead, running XP and Tiger in dual boot.
The desktop is a Intel C2D 2.4Ghz with 2Gb ram and a Ati X1300 praphics card. The parts aren´t much better than the laptops, but will they run the OS better? Shouldn´t a desktop with the same specs as a laptop run faster?

 

[clyde2801]

Try 4 gigs of ram for the mbp. Yeah, it will only use 3 and change, but DDR2 is cheap, and you may as well get the full dual channel benefit of it.

Also stick in a larger, faster hard drive in it. This will make a performance boost in your mbp. I did the same with a 2.33 c2d mbp, and it gave it a new lease on life.

It will also be a butt load cheaper than buying a new machine.

 

[skuliaxe]

Try 4 gigs of ram for the mbp. Yeah, it will only use 3 and change, but DDR2 is cheap, and you may as well get the full dual channel benefit of it.

Also stick in a larger, faster hard drive in it. This will make a performance boost in your mbp. I did the same with a 2.33 c2d mbp, and it gave it a new lease on life.

It will also be a butt load cheaper than buying a new machine.

Thanks for the advice.
I think a bigger HDD in the MBP would be the first choice. My wife is always struggling with disk space (5Gb or less free).

I wouldn´t actually have to buy a new computer for her to also use the PC desktop. I just would have to buy a Tiger license for it. I was just wondering if the performance would be any better.
Any thought on that matter?

 

[old-wiz]

Running osx tiger on a PC desktop (assuming it's not Apple) is against the EULA. You also can't simply put the tiger install disk in a non-Apple PC and expect it to install - it won't. It can be done, but not trivial.

 

[fpar]

That PC would definitely out spec the mbp, mainly due to the desktop graphics card. Even high end desktop graphics cards from over 5 yrs ago out speck the 9600m in current mbp's.

 

[Dustman]

I just bought a $250 eMachines desktop and it's running OS X just fine. Buy the license, throw out the CD, then download a distro. It was actually easier to install than XP.

 

[LouisBlack]

My wife is always struggling with disk space (5Gb or less free).

Theres your problem. OS X likes a fair amount of space left on the internal drive (usually about 10% or so) to use for swapping. As you're using lots of pro level apps I assume you are using a lot of RAM. As you only have 2GB of RAM, the computer is having to offload that onto the slower hard drive... when there isn't enough space on the hard drive to do that things get slooow.

Try clearing out some files and upgrading the RAM to 3GB. Your MBP is of a similar spec to my iMac and I rarely push that even when editing video or using Motion.

 

[seb-opp]

getting a windows PC to run a stable OS X would be harder than upgrading the MBP. Might as well upgrade the mbp instead. More ram and a 7200rpm HDD would be a good start.