Panther, battery life, and performance....

[Abstract]

I've heard some things floating around MR that Panther improves battery life, and improves performance. Now, before I start telling people that William Wallace is 8 feet tall and wrestles bears for fun, I'd like to get a little confirmation from those lucky enough to have used Panther to confirm that the Panther rumours are indeed true.

If it DOES improve battery life, can you tell me by how much? And if it improves performance, is it anything to get excited about. I have heard ridiculous stories about iBook notebooks getting 3.5 hours of battery life with Panther installed, when they used to get 2.5 hours with Jaguar. Sounds looney to me, but I just want to know. Hopefully my "up-to-date" copy of Panther actually ships on the 24th and everything is true.

 

[coolbreeze]

I'm curious too. I mean, expose looks great and all, but I need more to make me shell out $129 beans.

Anyone have proof of this massive speed increase on all machines (to include the G3)? Also, solid evidence of battery life increases, etc?

 

[ColoJohnBoy]

I'm running Panther as we speak on a 1GHz TiBook with 1 GB RAM. Performance is noticeably much better. Granted this is arbitrary, but I'd say a 20% performance improvement over 10.2.8 (I never had problems with it).

The scale used to determine this? The scale of John Rocks the Hiz-ouse! It'll be an international standard before you know it.

Anyhow, everything feels much snappier, much more responsive.

Battery life is definitely improved. Running my typical suite (Safari/iTunes/iChat/Mail/Word) I usually got just over 2 hours of battery life with Jaguar. In my little test, that was bumped to just over 2.5 hours. Not a huge improvement, but it definitely helps.

One thing I've noticed is that Panther must have better built in heat management. This sucker has been running MUCH cooler since I installed Panther. Still gets hot every once in awhile, but not as frequently, nor as extremely.

It's definitely worth it, especially if you'll be using it on a portable.

 

[crap freakboy]

anyone tried dev builds on macs which are old, by old I mean iMacdv 400?

Seriously tempted to Panther but if it just 'feels' faster/snappier rather then 'is' faster/snappier I doubt if I'd shell out £100. God I'm soo undecided, it's just so tempting.

 

[aethier]

Originally posted by crap freakboy
anyone tried dev builds on macs which are old, by old I mean iMacdv 400?

Seriously tempted to Panther but if it just 'feels' faster/snappier rather then 'is' faster/snappier I doubt if I'd shell out £100. God I'm soo undecided, it's just so tempting.

yup, i have buid 7b68 on my g3 imac 333 mhz, and in the simple tests i did against my g3 500mhz ibook, such as opening the system prefs, panther won by about 1.5 seconds, on an older slower machine

aethier

 

[Abstract]

If it can improve my 3 hours of battery life on my 12" 1GHz Powerbook to 3.5-4 hours, I'll be in heaven.

Oh, and that performance improvement will be nice too.

On top of the 2 questions I asked, how is the new finder? I find that my windows just sit there and its hard to find them while I'm multi-tasking. That's the one thing I like about MS Windows.........the taskbar at the bottom makes it so easy to find the window you're looking for. The Dock isn't as good for that, or thats the way it seems to me when I use it. Maybe I just use it wrong.

 

[crazzyeddie]

Battery life is the same as 10.2.8 on my TiBook 1ghz.

However in XBench, compared to 10.2.4, the GUI test improved 100%

The GUI feels alot faster too, i would say 50%. Last night i was importing some DV footage and i could use Expose and still see the live feed with NO lag at all. It was really nice.

 

[ColoJohnBoy]

Originally posted by Abstract
On top of the 2 questions I asked, how is the new finder? I find that my windows just sit there and its hard to find them while I'm multi-tasking. That's the one thing I like about MS Windows.........the taskbar at the bottom makes it so easy to find the window you're looking for. The Dock isn't as good for that, or thats the way it seems to me when I use it. Maybe I just use it wrong.

That's what Expose is for - you just hit F9 (Or any key you designate) and everything is visible - It's great, really. The finder, too, is awesome. To have the location bar at the left with all your top folders/drives is much easier than the old Finder.