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Pismo with a G4

MacUser1

MacUser1

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Aug 23, 2001
335
2
New York, NY
The main reason I did not buy the TiBook was that I was in love with the Pismo's Expansion Bay. However, today (via MacMinute) I found that both Newer Technology and PowerLogix are offering a PowerPC G4 Processor at 500 MHz for $299. I was wondering if this is a good idea and if anyone has done anything similar. Also, does anyone recommend one of the companies because of past experiences? Thanks for your help.
 
I had a good experience with a sonnet processor upgrade in a tower a few years back.

Personally, I don't think that you will get the same kind of performance as from a new system. I'd say you should wait until you can afford to get a true TiBook.

What do you need the expansion bay for anyway??? If the laptop doesn't have what you need inside, you can get a device in either USB or FireWire that does.
 
Expansion Bays

The main reason I use expansion bays rather than USB or FireWire peripherals is that I am in a dorm and the expansion bays are a lot easier for me to use, because my desk is less cluttered.
 
I have an old 7600 which i upgraded with G3 500 from newer. Not had any problems with it. Installation was a doddle, ran first time..... Best part was that i'd ordered a 450, but got the 500 for the same price :D

Based on past experience, if i was going to another upgrade, i'd most likely go with newer again. FYI: if they are offering a G4 upgrade, then i would assume they've done extensive testing, and it's an actual viable possibility. They seem to be a reliable company; i trust their upgrades anyway.
 
I think that Sonnet processors are probably of the highest quality you can get. My father put in a 300MHz G3 upgrade from an old PowerMac xxxx or something and it seemed to run a bit faster. I am still waiting to upgrade my original iMac (yes, the 233MHz version I am typing on) to a 500MHz G3 processor. I wanted a G4 upgrade, but my parents refuse to spend $700 to upgrade an iMac to a G4 less than equivalent to the 0.5GHz Cube. :)
 
Re: PowerLogix

Originally posted by MacUser1
Has anyone done anything through PowerLogix?
Click to expand...

Yes. I installed a PowerLogix G3 350MHz processor card in a 7600 at work a few years ago. It continues to work very well. The card I installed has a lot of pin settings so you can taylor it to the speed of your system bus (i.e. you can overclock it without any sweat). Since day 1, the Apple System Profiler has shown it operating at 400MHz.:)

Seems a reputable company to me. Would love to hear about your experience if you go for it. I would consider it for my Pismo (love my expansion bay zip drive!).
 
Re: Expansion Bays

Originally posted by MacUser1
The main reason I use expansion bays rather than USB or FireWire peripherals is that I am in a dorm and the expansion bays are a lot easier for me to use, because my desk is less cluttered.
Click to expand...

I know that was a major concern of mine when I decided to upgrade my trusty lombard to a tiBook-- losing the expansion bay. Think of it this way-- with a new tiBook, you have a burner built in, a fairly large HD etc. If you want an external firewire HD, get an iPod (if you're in a dorm, i'm assuming you're a colleg cat and probably LOVE music and take a walkman with you alot) which, if replacing a walkman, will take us MUCH LESS space, and get a slimline Zip250 if you use one of them--probably the same size as an expansion bay zip, and no big power brick like the old ZIP externals. Although the iPod has made the zip fairly useless to me.

So, you really don't have much externally, really. ;) You'll be so much more happier albeit poorer... But those lombards are still fetching quite a penny.... that plus the $300 bucks you have allocated for the upgrade... you're almost there.

Apple discount, $100 off for an iPod....well. You're REALLY close. :)

I understand where you're coming from, but I soon realized that I had these three things on my desk all the time with the lombard-- I had a DVD Module, A CD-burner, A VST expansion bay 4gb drive, a VST Zip 100 and an extra battery.

That's SURELY much more room than a tiBook or iBook with Combo drive, small iPod, big internal drive, and extra battery. :)

Just my .02 :) From someone who was in the same position a year ago....

Just noticed! Apple is giving away a 5gb Superfly drive with powerbook purchases. So if you would get, say, a low-end tiBook 667, you get 30gb, plus 5, plus say, 5 more from iPod...cd burner, ability to run QE, etc. For about $2600. Not too bad!



:) ;) Good luck!
 
Re: Re: Good Point

Originally posted by Moxiemike


Where are you at in PA?? Curious... don't see too many PAers on this site. :)

m
Click to expand...
Actually, I was born in New Jersey but I have spent most of my time now in PA, because I attend a private school in Kingston, right near Wilkes-Barre.
 
Re: Re: Re: Good Point

Originally posted by MacUser1

Actually, I was born in New Jersey but I have spent most of my time now in PA, because I attend a private school in Kingston, right near Wilkes-Barre.
Click to expand...

Cool. I'm obviously onthe other end of the state.... in Pittsburgh. Good luck with the mac shopping!

m
 
Well, I think the jump is not that much. I have my 500Mhz Pismo running togather with my G4 400 tower and the speed is about the same, I may say a 10% difference in rendering.

I would make the jump for a G4 600Mhz.

At list the price is very good, now I know what happened with my old g4 4000 chip when I changed to a dual 500Mhz.
 
Originally posted by mymemory
Well, I think the jump is not that much. I have my 500Mhz Pismo running togather with my G4 400 tower and the speed is about the same, I may say a 10% difference in rendering.

I would make the jump for a G4 600Mhz.

At list the price is very good, now I know what happened with my old g4 4000 chip when I changed to a dual 500Mhz.
Click to expand...

MacUser, I might also consider the 667 from Compusa for $1999. Pretty hot deal. I know someone who bought one, was supposed to have 256mb of ram in it, but had 512 (2x256) from the apple "double your memory" program that they had going where you automatically got a 256 mb upgrade.

Check it out. I know they have a bunch left. Figure, you can get at least a grand maybe more for your pismo.....
m
 
The 500mhz G4 upgrade won't make much of a difference at all (believe me, I tried to upgrade my old powerbook as well). If you really want to get better performance out of a laptop, you'll have to jump up to tiBook. The graphics cards in pismos are impossible to upgrade and you can only have 512 MB of ram (according to Apple). And just out of curiosity, what do you use in your expansion bay? a zip drive? cd-rw? DVD? extra HD? I think they've pretty much become obsolete... the only thing you can't get with a tiBook (internally) is a zip drive, and you can get external zip drives that are about the size of a zip disc ... I think you would be wasting your $300.
 
Re: Thanks

Originally posted by MacUser1
Thanks for all of the help, I think I just might make a jump to a TiBook.
Click to expand...

Good choice.

If you can hold out until after MWNY, you might be happier. While it is unlikely for any updates to happen then for the TiBook, you never really know.
 
Originally posted by AlphaTech


I know, aint that just a biatch?? LOL!!! :D
Click to expand...
\

Alpha, I think we'd be a good team selling tibooks! :)

maybe they should do a "real people" commercial with us....alkthough they be best keeping my mug off of tv. heh

m
 
although i love the old g3 powerbook i think you made the right decision. ive been eyeing a g4 upgrade for mine as well but 500mhz? its too small an upgrade for that price. if they had a faster processor id do it.

the old powerbooks IMO have a much better design than the Tipowerbooks. i dont think i will ever upgrade to a new laptop until apple gets rid of the Ti, it looks nice, but thats about it.

i think the first thing you will notice is you have about half the battery life in the Ti. to me that issue alone is the main reason not to buy a Ti.

but unfortunately if you want power in a laptop the Ti is the ONLY way to go (and as far as last resorts it is a hell of a nice one).

i think i will be buying desktops until apple upgrades the laptop's form factor, beacause the Ti IMO was a downgrade in design. apple had to make a lot fo sacrifices to make the Ti that skinny. i think the next upgrade with advances in tech apple will be able to keep it small without making similiar sacrifices. but i might be waiting for a very long time as the Ti is very popular.
 
Originally posted by AmbitiousLemon
although i love the old g3 powerbook i think you made the right decision. ive been eyeing a g4 upgrade for mine as well but 500mhz? its too small an upgrade for that price. if they had a faster processor id do it.

the old powerbooks IMO have a much better design than the Tipowerbooks. i dont think i will ever upgrade to a new laptop until apple gets rid of the Ti, it looks nice, but thats about it.

i think the first thing you will notice is you have about half the battery life in the Ti. to me that issue alone is the main reason not to buy a Ti.

but unfortunately if you want power in a laptop the Ti is the ONLY way to go (and as far as last resorts it is a hell of a nice one).

i think i will be buying desktops until apple upgrades the laptop's form factor, beacause the Ti IMO was a downgrade in design. apple had to make a lot fo sacrifices to make the Ti that skinny. i think the next upgrade with advances in tech apple will be able to keep it small without making similiar sacrifices. but i might be waiting for a very long time as the Ti is very popular.
Click to expand...

I dunno ambitious... I tend to disagree with your comments about the form factor. My friend has a pismo with a new battery (just replaced) and we get similar battery life (i have a ti rev.b 667) in OS x-- about 3.5-4 hours.

Contrary to popular belief, I think the ti is a bit more rugged than people give it credit for. My old lombard looked like heck when I sold it, the casing has nicks and scratches all over it thanks to that rubberiszed coating it had. The handles that ejected the drive bays kept cracking on me, and the hinged door on the back consistently came off. And I am VERU cautious and gentle with my books. My ti has yet to (knock on wood) get a scratch on it, and the doors and what not have proven to be CRAZILY rugged.

My friend dropped a gamecube onto his ti and while he has a massive dent on it (any laptop would) the screen functions without problem. I had a friend who dropped an art book on his iBook and it cracked the screen.

I don't think there are many sacrifices to the ti, and anyone who bellyaches about the loss of expansion bays doesn't realize that they STILL have to carry around the modules for it-- my lombard had DVD, Cd-R, Expansion HD and Zip. I am better off with the ti-- I carry my iPod everywhere (expansion HD) my Zip 250 slimline is about the same size as the expansion bay ZIP and the DVD and CD-RW are all built into a nice combo...

I think people that bash the ti are really just a bit shortsighted---I think it's really going to be tough for Apple to top this one. Performance and video issues aside, this may be the perfect form factor.... really, what else can they do???
 
Hey AL, what kind of battery time do you get out of your PowerBook?? I routinely see over 3 hours per charge on my TiBook and I have none of the energy saving routines active. My drive never spins down nor do I let my screen go to low power mode, or turn off. I do have a screen saver that goes on after 10 minutes of no activity, but that does nothing to battery life. I ran a full dvd movie on it one time when we had a power failure here (on my first TiBook) and still had over 30 minutes of battery life left on it. That was with the dvd drive spinning constantly as well as the hard drive not spinning down, at all.

At work, there is a manager that had a text book fall onto his TiBook, from a few feet and hit with the edge/corner of the book. It broke a few keys, one of them not being able to go back on and snap into place, as well as put a small crack in the top edge of the case. The crack is just above the power button, on the edge, to the right of the hinge. He didn't even see it until I pointed it out. The TiBook has shown no other effects from the book falling onto it. I will be checking into getting a replacement top cover for him in the next week or so, so that it can be fixed up (already got the replacement keyboard and installed it). He even had the laptop on one of the coolpad podium thingies. I don't know if that made the damage worse, or less.

Titanium, especially as thin as what Apple is using for the PowerBook G4 will dent, BUT it isn't too hard to remove those dents from it. IF you need to send the laptop into Apple in the future, let them know, and chances are they will remove the dent for you. It could be a free fix, depending on if you have any warranty left (either the 1 year or from AppleCare protection). They will let you know before they go and make the repair, so that you don't get a shock from a bill.
 
i didnt mean to sound negative about the Ti. i have never heard someone who owned one who regretted it. i simply think the old design was better.

how much battery life do i get? about 9 hours on average. and that is with all the energy settings set to never. you have to remember the old powerbooks hold two batteries. thats why i said twice the battery life. i dont think i could really be portable with just 3 or 4 hours of life.

i certainly wasnt 'bitching' about the Ti. i dont own one so i have no reason to bitch. i didnt like it so i didnt buy it. no big deal. i know we all love our macs so its hard to hear critisism.

i can be just as critical about the g3 powerbooks as well. they certainly have their faults, as does any machine. i just feel the g3 powerbook was a better design for its time. but that isnt to say the Ti isnt a great machine.
 
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