New Powerbooks Next Week?

[TypeR389]

As Far as PC's go, Dells are not bad

I am not going to continue the comparisons between the dells and the macs, they both have points, and I doubt anyone is going to convince the 'other' side they are wrong here.

I bought a refurb dell about 9 months ago, dual PIII 933, quaddro2 64MB 512MB PC800 RDRAM, 2 18gb 10k ultra scsi3 drives, a DVD and CD-RW and then the normal pc junk, but I only paid 2k for it. P4's Megahurts values are crazy, but the dual 933 system is actually pretty smokin, I think the brand new P4 are finally as fast as my machine, I am waiting to get a G4, my mac is too old to do a good comparison, but I am thinking that my pc would do pretty well in a photoshop test, and other than a fan that died on the dell, which they had a replacement to me within 16 hours, I have been happy. Too bad it doesn't run OS-X, I am happy with the hardware, too bad I hate windoze 🙁

 

[jefhatfield]

Re: As Far as PC's go, Dells are not bad

Originally posted by TypeR389
I am not going to continue the comparisons between the dells and the macs, they both have points, and I doubt anyone is going to convince the 'other' side they are wrong here.

I bought a refurb dell about 9 months ago, dual PIII 933, quaddro2 64MB 512MB PC800 RDRAM, 2 18gb 10k ultra scsi3 drives, a DVD and CD-RW and then the normal pc junk, but I only paid 2k for it. P4's Megahurts values are crazy, but the dual 933 system is actually pretty smokin, I think the brand new P4 are finally as fast as my machine, I am waiting to get a G4, my mac is too old to do a good comparison, but I am thinking that my pc would do pretty well in a photoshop test, and other than a fan that died on the dell, which they had a replacement to me within 16 hours, I have been happy. Too bad it doesn't run OS-X, I am happy with the hardware, too bad I hate windoze 🙁

do you really mean rdram or sdram?

just a minor point...and how fast is your ram?

jef
pc techie

 

[dr.bob]

The Dell boys have a point

Ok, I'm going to buy a laptop in the next couple of months, and I'm almost definitely going to buy a powerbook. Why? In a word, vanity. The TiBook is a computer as I think computers should be: A good processor architecture, a good operating system architecture, and a damn sexy case. If I were to design a computer, I hope it would look like the TiBook. And I'll spend $1000 over the price of an equivelent PC laptop to have it.

So I'll buy a mac. But I'll only be buying one. For all other purposes I'll buy PCs. Why? Because they're **** cheap. When I need another desktop machine: PC. When I need several compute machines: PCs.

I use DV and firewire on the PC, and it works fine. Likewise pretty much everything else - I have no reason not to buy PCs.

 

[porovaara]

Originally posted by Backtothemac

YOU CAN'T ORDER A DELL WITH 2 VIDEO CARDS IN IT. Why, because they don't sell PCI video cards in their configurations, which means unless there is a new mobo that supports 2 AGP cards, so I hope that they are the liars here.

uh you do know that most higher end PeeCee video cards have dual out capabilities or come with dual out, right?

please people flame based on merits not on "weaknesses"

ie, the mac has a "real complete user experience:, whereas the pc feels "cobbled together" is an exmaple

 

[Rower_CPU]

Re: Re: As Far as PC's go, Dells are not bad

Originally posted by jefhatfield


do you really mean rdram or sdram?

just a minor point...and how fast is your ram?

jef
pc techie

PC800 is RDRAM...better known as Rambus

 

[SPG]

Re: The Dell boys have a point

Originally posted by dr.bob


I use DV and firewire on the PC, and it works fine. Likewise pretty much everything else - I have no reason not to buy PCs.

Hey Doc, How did you get your firewire and DV working? Which card for firewire and what software?
I am not kidding, but I have yet to see a single PC that was able to do it consistently. I get a lot of calls from video guys (semi-pro) who are having tech problems and the mac guys I can always help, but the PC guys wind up eventually giving up or milking their systems just long enough to get the job done through all sorts of round about ways.
If you can tell me how you got it working I can pass that info along and hopefully help them out (if they haven't given up on PC DV editing).
Most common problems I hear are firewire cards burning out and no longer recognizing anything, and then just inability to keep up the I/O without dropping a lot of frames.
Thanks for any help Doc,
-SPG

 

[TypeR389]

Re: Re: As Far as PC's go, Dells are not bad

Originally posted by jefhatfield


do you really mean rdram or sdram?

just a minor point...and how fast is your ram?

jef
pc techie

I mean RDRAM, or rambus, and 800 is currently the pretty fast in either world. It is good memory, and smokingly fast, it just was REALLY expensive for the longest time. At the time I bought my system, the RAM alone cost over a grand for brand name memory. and saying that is is only like 10-15% faster than the SDRAM of the day, but three times the cost, nobody outside the professional workstation wanted to pay the premium, but the SMP chipset for Intel dictated it's use, which is an interesting counter point from where apple is. in the PC world at the time, we had good performance, but nobody could afford it. I wonder if that is better than having slightly slower, albeit affordable technology? Thank god this is no longer the case, Rambus is still a little more expensive, but much close in line to DDR SDRAM in price now speed wise is quite similar for the higher end of both lines...

BTW, I have also added a FW card to the machine since then and use an extranal 120GB WD drive (8MB cache, 911 chipset) and have dumped video from a friends sony DV cam(not sure the model exactly). It was actually one of the few real PNP things I have seen work on my XP machine, plug the FW cable in, computer churns for 15 secs, viola and little window comes up and says I found a camera, what do you want to do? It wanted to use windows movie maker, which is a total pile of excrement, but after installed ULead videostudio, was up and running. I could totally tell Apple had something to do with the design hardware spec 😉 And this is the not all that fast interface on my SB Audigy card (sweet cheap almost pro sound card)

 

[Rower_CPU]

Re: Re: Re: As Far as PC's go, Dells are not bad

Originally posted by TypeR389
I mean RDRAM, or rambus, and 800 is currently the pretty fast in either world. It is good memory, and smokingly fast, it just was REALLY expensive for the longest time. At the time I bought my system, the RAM alone cost over a grand for brand name memory. and saying that is is only like 10-15% faster than the SDRAM of the day, but three times the cost, nobody outside the professional workstation wanted to pay the premium, but the SMP chipset for Intel dictated it's use, which is an interesting counter point from where apple is. in the PC world at the time, we had good performance, but nobody could afford it. I wonder if that is better than having slightly slower, albeit affordable technology? Thank god this is no longer the case, Rambus is still a little more expensive, but much close in line to DDR SDRAM in price now speed wise is quite similar for the higher end of both lines...

RDRAM is dead. Intel is going with DDR now. The high price and legal quibbling that Rambus engaged in killed their chip business.

 

[Backtothemac]

Originally posted by porovaara


uh you do know that most higher end PeeCee video cards have dual out capabilities or come with dual out, right?

please people flame based on merits not on "weaknesses"

ie, the mac has a "real complete user experience:, whereas the pc feels "cobbled together" is an exmaple

Um, see below quote from cmoney.

"The Dells I priced had 2 video cards. Add in the price for 2 17" CRTs and now you have approximately the cost of a low end iMac but with 2x the screen resolution and it's faster to boot."

Now you can understand why I responded the way I did. Also, no offense, but na, nevermind, it isn't worth it. Aw, to heck with it. Please read the posts before accusing of flame bait. If not, you may find yourself suiting up for a little toasting.
😛

 

[TypeR389]

Re: Re: Re: Re: As Far as PC's go, Dells are not bad

Originally posted by Rower_CPU


RDRAM is dead. Intel is going with DDR now. The high price and legal quibbling that Rambus engaged in killed their chip business.

I don't think Rambus is dead, they had way more problems and legal issues then they should have, but now that the price is comparable, I have no problem paying a reasonable hit for performance. RDRAM has some advantages in architecture over DDR SDRAM, and the inverse is true as well, just different technology, and I am a firm beliver in the fact the competition is good for us, so let rambus and DDR SDRAM fight it out, giving us faster cheaper memory!

 

[Rower_CPU]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: As Far as PC's go, Dells are not bad

Originally posted by TypeR389
I don't think Rambus is dead, they had way more problems and legal issues then they should have, but now that the price is comparable, I have no problem paying a reasonable hit for performance. RDRAM has some advantages in architecture over DDR SDRAM, and the inverse is true as well, just different technology, and I am a firm beliver in the fact the competition is good for us, so let rambus and DDR SDRAM fight it out, giving us faster cheaper memory!

I'd be very surprised to RDRAM scratch it's way back into the picture. DDR has become standard on video chipsets and on CPU cache. By the time it manages to resurrect itself we will be beyond the current technology, leaving it, once again, in the dust.

 

[pimentoLoaf]

I'd rather wait for Apple to bring out a 3-GHz tiMac, so I can then replace my 500-MHz iBook AND my aging 366-MHz Toshiba PC.

AppleWorks would really rock on that machine, you know? 😱

 

[Backtothemac]

Well said well spoken pimento. 😉

 

[jefhatfield]

Re: Re: Re: Re: As Far as PC's go, Dells are not bad

Originally posted by Rower_CPU


RDRAM is dead. Intel is going with DDR now. The high price and legal quibbling that Rambus engaged in killed their chip business.

so it was rambus...wow, that is really cool

p4 is going ddr though, so something bad did happen somewhere...too bad😡

 

[TypeR389]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: As Far as PC's go, Dells are not bad

Originally posted by Rower_CPU


I'd be very surprised to RDRAM scratch it's way back into the picture. DDR has become standard on video chipsets and on CPU cache. By the time it manages to resurrect itself we will be beyond the current technology, leaving it, once again, in the dust.

Alot if not most of the high end PC based workstation market is still going with RDRAM. I agree that RDRAM will not likely make it back into consumer level machines, but for people looking for every little tweak, RDRAM still has a niche. check out http://www.rambus.com/company/press/pressreleases/2002/020225a.html. This stuff is smokin! Well hopefully not really, but 4.2 GB/sec max theoretical throughput...

 

[Pelorus]

odd

Originally posted by cmoney
We wanna go Mac for the office, and two of us have Macs at home. But Macs just don't fit into the budget when the cheapest pro model is twice as expensive as a PC.

Depends what you want. A friend recently bought a 2nd hand TiBook 500 and an 2nd hand Apple 1710 display with adapter. He now boasts huge screen resolutions when working in his studio and also has the option of working away from the desk.

PC desktops are cheap and yes you can get very competitive prices that make Macs look very expensive but I can't say that any PC laptops out there are worth the money whereas Apple's laptops all represent good value. A 667 Mgz G4 TiBook more than beats a 1.4 GHz PC laptop even though the latter has a better graphics card - in terms of sheer performance. I'm not talking about focussed benchmarks but about a whole gamut of things.

Even without the benefit of Altivec and with a lacklustre graphics card a 400 MHz Pismo was beating 1.1 Ghz laptops in real world usage. Things like watching a movie off the disk while FTPing huge DV files was not possible on the PC laptops without some serious jumping. To make things better we switched the FTP process to a 1.6 GHz desktop machine and still we found XP jumping all over the place during the FTP. We ended up watching the movie trailers on the Pismo while it was doing the FTP.

All anecdotal I know. Also the truth.

 

[mrhuge73]

I'm thinking that apple wants to clear out some of their stock in the lower end powerbooks, maybe get rid of the 550 all together. So if they can bump up the clock speed to 800 and lower the price of the 667, more people will take them up on that offer. I think that this would let them release the NEW LINE of PBs at MWNY. I cant wait to see what will be coming out.

 

[SPG]

When FCP3 came out there was a litlle bit of a bruhaha over in Cupertino about the fact that one of their newly intro'ed machines couldn't support realtime RT, that machine being the 550 tiBook. It was considered to be a lack of communication between developpment teams that allowed the 550 to be just underpowered or under bussed I believe and the word was that even though the 550 was new it was slated to be replaced asap.

 

[Bradcoe]

Just seems weird

667 and 800Mhz seem to be fine for a speed bump. However, pricing the 800Mhz G4 at $3199, when the 800Mhz G4 iMac is $1899 seems rather rediculous. I know, I know, for numerous reasons notebooks/laptops are much more costly, but come on, the chip itself is not THAT expensive, and assuming there are no other changes except for the processor speed increase and HD going from 30gig to 40gig (still 4200rpm, only the 48gig is 5400rpm, and I'm not sure how much of a difference this makes/or of necessity it is since i've only used a 4200rpm notebook drive), it's quite the price hike.
Yes, RAM and LCD's have gone up, and it was already suggested that apple is just upping the cost AND speed to make it not appear as though they are just tacking on $ like they did with the iMac.
If the price is going to be this high ($3199) then apple needs a lot more improvements to make it viable for the Pros who think nothing of $3200 by adding/improving hardware, or drop that top-end price.
BTW, this is my frist post, although I've been reading these boards for quite some time.

 

[SPG]

yeah, Bradcoe i agree that a price hike wouldn't be too welcome. The only justification I could give is that the top end machine would have some serious new features, one or more of the following...new MOBO design with a big speed increase, DDR, firewire2, better screen, superdrive (SPG ducks immediately), or something else we haven't even dreamed of. If the technology jumps than yes a price hike could be justified, but if it's the same old same old with a speed bump, then eBay may be the place to shop.

 

[Rower_CPU]

On the other hand, a price hike might fall in line with the overall industry trend of rising prices due to higher costs (at least, acoording to SJ).

It's a better PR move to hike the price with a new/upgraded product, than an old one that's been out for a while.

 

[SPG]

Originally posted by Rower_CPU
On the other hand, a price hike might fall in line with the overall industry trend of rising prices due to higher costs (at least, acoording to SJ).

It's a better PR move to hike the price with a new/upgraded product, than an old one that's been out for a while.

That justifies it, but it doesn't make it a less bitter pill to swallow.

 

[jefhatfield]

imac got a facelift, ibook got a larger display, and powermac is heading into the g5 in the future (hopefully)

but even though it is tibook's turn and there have been speculations of this sleek laptop for many months now about superdrive or other big changes,

i think only a modest speed bump will be the reality

why?

because apple will put their next big announcement with the g5 powermac

and

apple needs to beef up their desktops as their did with the g4imac and now the need for a really high end desktop

for some people, getting an imac is a much better value than powermac, so apple needs to focus on the g5, and then maybe it can address the tibook in a BIG way

ibook may also go thru modest speed bumps and ram bumps

come on steve jobs, give us that g5 before the year is up😉