PPC Diehard: tell me why I should not want a 1.67 PB?

[Sun Baked]

Don't do it, you might have to give up that printer and scanner you have running under OS 9.

You upgrade to intel and you might finally decide to retire that Atari 2600 you are still playing.

Which starts getting expensive.

 

[Ashka]

Power books and iBooks are great, I'm sticking to my beaut 14" 1.42 GHz iBook with a gig of ram for a while yet.

iBooks and Power books run and recharge happily on 12 volt car adapters. Mine has been running off a Lind car adapter for 2 years. The Power hungry intel family can't even recharge on 18 volt airline connections.

Leopard has been running without a hitch since the day it landed, I have the 2 finger scroll and right click, I have the semi transparent menu bar. Not much missing

Have fun with whichever you use.

 

[Metuas]

I was a PPC diehard...well, until I got a MBP. It boots in, like, 20 seconds. It smokes my dual 2GHz G5. It has a faster processor, bigger HD, more RAM, better graphics card (although, at least I can count on the GeForce 5200FX to work for a few more years), DL superdrive.

I loved my PowerBook G4 1.5GHz, but its performance was pathetic in comparison to the new Intel lineup. Oh, and if you want to run anything after Leopard, you can't count on PPC support, except for *maybe* G5's.

Seriously, I loved the PowerPC era of Macs, but it's over. And unless you already have one, you shouldn't be getting a new one, unless you can get it for very little, and don't plan on doing any serious work with it. The only thing I could see buying a PPC machine for is either a kids' computer, a computer for use in the kitchen, a music player, and/or a purely e-mail/internet machine. Ironically, the best PPC buy at this point might just be an iMac G3. With prices dropping to about $20, it's a great spare computer to have, running Jaguar or Panther, with a very light workload, nothing more than internet and music.

Do yourself a favor, and buy a newer Intel Mac. You'll never want to go back

 

[Lord Blackadder]

The ppc fanboyism in this thread is nauseating. The fact is that buying a powerbook this day in age, unless you get an amazing deal on it, is NOT a good value. Any intel machine will run circles around it in the vast majority of apps. And there's a strong possibility you won't be able to run 10.6 at all.

Don't believe the hype, folks. Ppc is dead, gone, and soon to be forgotten.

That's a bunch of FUD. While the Intel Macs are faster pound-for-pound, the later-model PPCs still offer good performance. I did almost all my thesis research on G4s and G5s. They run CS2 very well.

Sure they aren't really "worth it" from a pure financial perspective, but just because you can't run 10.6 or the latest 3D doesn't mean the machine is useless.

 

[California]

Hi California - it's good to see another die-hard PPC fan on this site still!

My first mac was a Dual 2GHz PowerMac. God that thing was built like a brick *****house. It just purred with quality. Once rumors on the Mac Pro surfaced, I sold the PM and bought a MP.

From a build quality perspective, I regret that choice - prime example to all you Intel lovers - the casing surrounding the Optical drive actually scratches as one takes out the optical drive. Another example is the HDD bays - that level of quality just wouldn't have shipped in a PowerMac.

My dream machine remained - the 12 inch PowerBook. Another unit built with quality in mind. Go buy me an Intel machine and I can rip it to shreds vs a used (but well looked after) PowerBook in seconds.

Despite the raw processing power increasing a fair amount, my beloved is the 12 inch.

iPhone 2G was built far better than the 3G. Again, I speak from personal experience. My 3G glass screen isn't flat on one side, the 2G was absolutely flawless.

Am I having a 'moan' -- maybe, but I have spent a shedload of cash on equipment for years. My prized possession is the 12-inch. Rock solid reliability. Don't believe me? Go look on eBay for a 12 inch PB - your chin will hit the floor.

Oh, and an Intel Mac Mini can smoke a Dual G5 for H.264 encoding - C2D really does smoke the G5 in many applications. Problem was, as soon as people started getting a hang for optimizing for G5 - Intel came through and their superior compilers are very very good.

F

Interesting, my computer right now is a pristine upgraded 12" Powerbook 1.5ghz with maxed ram. I put in a 250gb hard drive. Still has over a year of Applecare on it! It runs my 23" ACD with Bookendz piece.

It is the ram limit of 1.25 that has me pondering a 15" PB.

Glad to see so many like PPC still. This little 12 inch Power book -- actually the last revisions of all the PPC laptops were great machines. I think the 1.42 iBook was a great machine as well, with 1.5gbs of ram -- but I could not run the ACD off it.

 

[dukebound85]

I came of "Apple" age when I got to this forum four years ago.

I know many people at that time who believed the PowerPC superiority over Intel. A guy friend of mine lectured me for hours on the superiority of the IBM chip. Then I started to play around with PPC machines, got the hang of opening them up and not being afraid to swap hard drives, I started to understand what Apple was actually manufacturing and designing.


Put it to you this way, the first time i ever opened a machine was in August 2004, literally the last day of my warranty of my 1st generation Powerbook Titanium. I was on the phone with Apple because I was completely scared of putting a stick of ram in the machine. I was sweating. Shaking

I was so nervous to touch that machine, that, yes, I snapped off the ram holders and Apple ended up having to send me basically a new machine with a brand new logic board (Thank God I was on the phone with them whilie I was so nervous).

All that to say, I got over my fear very fast and began to love Apple. I suppose I felt a bit nervous about the Intel DRM move -- from what I understood at the time of the switch was that PPC machines do not have the same sort of "spy chip' inside as INtel does.

I could be totally wrong but I'm just very happy with my 2006 purchase of my Powerbook 1.5 12 inch -- apple care for another full year -- and if it wasn't for the ram limit, I wouldn't care.

I still cannot believe Apple is going to phase out PPC users with Snow Leopard. Makes me want to sue them a little for making my machine obselete while it still has Applecare on it!

That's my stupid story. I haven't thought about it for a while, just knew that getting a bigger powerbook for the ram bump is probably not the smartest move. It's just that i know how to work on the PPC machines and am still slightly more suspicious of an Intel motherboard than a PPC.

well you can still open up intel machines and swap ram, hd, etc if need be

i am curious why people love ppc so much that they wont upgrade to intel. sure i liked the g4 and g3's and such but with intel, the performance increase went through the roof compared to ppc. that and the ability to run windows natively was a great side effect if you ever needed to. i remember virtual pc and it was absolute junk

maybe its just me, but what i like about apple is the os and whatever processor that makes the os run the best, i am all for.

 

[California]

well you can still open up intel machines and swap ram, hd, etc if need be

i am curious why people love ppc so much that they wont upgrade to intel. sure i liked the g4 and g3's and such but with intel, the performance increase went through the roof compared to ppc. that and the ability to run windows natively was a great side effect if you ever needed to. i remember virtual pc and it was absolute junk

maybe its just me, but what i like about apple is the os and whatever processor that makes the os run the best, i am all for.

I talked to some conspiracy Apple guy two years ago about this. (Funny i have to call him about an old iBook part today)

He lectured me that Intel had some chip in it that PPC did not for DRM and that they were crap. I know this is "conspiracy theory" but frankly I have noticed that Apple has a lot more say about my itunes than I like

 

[California]

Don't do it, you might have to give up that printer and scanner you have running under OS 9.

You upgrade to intel and you might finally decide to retire that Atari 2600 you are still playing.

Which starts getting expensive.

That's funny. But no, been off OS 9 forever. But that is a reason to stay ppc, I do have a box of research on FLOPPY DISCS from my Powerbook 145b. And yes, I still have a couple of external usb floppy drives that I keep in case I need to look up those old files.

 

[dukebound85]

I talked to some conspiracy Apple guy two years ago about this. (Funny i have to call him about an old iBook part today)

He lectured me that Intel had some chip in it that PPC did not for DRM and that they were crap. I know this is "conspiracy theory" but frankly I have noticed that Apple has a lot more say about my itunes than I like

well to be fair that isnt a hardware limitation as it applies to both ppc and intel macs equally in terms of drm

 

[quasinormal]

I have both the last revision 1.67GHz Powerbook and a previous revision 2.4GHz Macbook Pro with 4GB RAM. For day to day use, I prefer the Powerbook with its 1.5GB of RAM and Leopard. The two finger scrolling seems to work better on the PB and with its extra 60 pixels of vertical resolution and warmer screen, i prefer the PB screen too at least in non bright conditions.

From what can gather it is still a highly sought after machine. If the OP can find the !.67 with DL superdrive and high resolution screen for a good price, I'd say he will not be disappointed.

 

[jag00]

Can you live without Leopard?

At work, we still have a lot of PPC machines (Mac Pro G5s and Power Books G4s). I have noticed the machines running Tiger seem to be a bit faster, and those that we upgraded to Leopard just kind of chug along. In terms of performance and stability, I think Tiger is a much better choice for those older systems.

-J

 

[California]

well to be fair that isnt a hardware limitation as it applies to both ppc and intel macs equally in terms of drm

I record interviews with an iTalk off an 4th Gen iPod to iTunes.

I am having to backtrack to Panther's iTunes version if I want to make a CD of my own recordings. That's what I mean about iTunes and why I am loathe to give up PPCs.

I think I'm going to get a powerbook or G5 PM and hold out until I have to!

Thanks again guys for the discussion.

 

[Fuchal]

Switching to Intel was the best move Apple has ever made.

 

[26139]

yep

I record interviews with an iTalk off an 4th Gen iPod to iTunes.

I am having to backtrack to Panther's iTunes version if I want to make a CD of my own recordings. That's what I mean about iTunes and why I am loathe to give up PPCs.

I think I'm going to get a powerbook or G5 PM and hold out until I have to!

Thanks again guys for the discussion.

I'm running all PPC here too, but I wouldn't but another PPC Apple unless I got a SCREAMING deal.