Probably just a tactile illusion, but I found it interesting. I wonder if all those fans and giant heat sinks are more for keeping the machines quiet (which they were) than just cooling the system.
Yes, as has been stated a few times here and elsewhere. Unfortunately, some (not you) continue to keep repeating the incorrect perception that the mass of cooling design that went into the G5 is because the chips are little mini-nuclear reactors. It's basically an over-engineered design to make the system quiet. I'm not sure I can remember a high-powered system in recent years that was as quiet as the G5's seem to be. That's impressive, though it undoubtedly contributes a bit to the high cost and large size of the machines.
Remember also that the current G5 would go into a laptop at a lower clock rate and lower voltage than the PowerMacs, just as the G4's in existing PowerBooks run slower than those in the last PowerMac G4's.
Finally, to those who insist on repeating the fiction of how hot the G5 is: how does the cooling system look on a G4 DP1.42? Big heatsinks, loud fans. Does that mean the G4 can't go into a laptop?
I'm not saying the G5 PowerBooks are imminent, but it's not impossible. Certainly, the 90 nm 970 will be a *better* laptop processor than the current one, and it's likely that if they do come out in the near term with a 130 nm G5 in a PowerBook, that'll leave room open for a nice speed bump and/or battery life improvement when they move to the 90 nm parts.
With all that said, I do not know how laptop-ready the various support components in the G5 are. The lack of L3 cache in a G5 system should help a little, though.
Sorry for the long rant, it just drives me crazy hearing the "G5 too hot for a laptop because of 9 fans in the PowerMac" thing over and over.
