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What is it With the Recent Influx of N00bs?

Lil Chillbil said:
My opinion on Powerpc has changed so much over the past year since I was happily and by choice running a 400mhz g4 tower and powerbook g4 baseline 12inch. But then the retinas started to come out later in the summer and I remember that everyday I would meet up with one of my mates for lunch at hometown buffet. I brought my powerbook and it worked just fine for internet and youtube under leopard and he brought his powerbook and he thought it was great. But then his birthday came round and he got himself a brand new baseline macbook pro retina. It was so thin compared to my already thin allu pb, and if you put them right next to each other and looked at the displays there was just no contest. So it was at that moment that I 1st started thinking about going intel, but the macs were too damn expensive in the $500 range for one used (I was looking on craigslist.) I eventually settled on a g5 2.0ghz with 6 gigs of ram a nice 128-mb graphics card and more than 4x the space as my powerbook. It was a screamer on tenfourfox, and the 23inch plastic cinema display was magnificent.


I used this setup everyday for 3 months and since I went intel I have never been happy with my setup, always comparing it to the rest of the worlds speed and not whether or not it met my needs.

nowadays I use a Chromebook

I still meet my friend for lunch everyday and he brings his powerbook...
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Don't really care much about retina. However I would love to have 6 GB of RAM on my laptop. I will never understand why Apple never allowed 3 GB of RAM for iBook G4...

BTW my ibook and my main desktop machine have the same amount of RAM ;) But it can play 1080p, Youtube at 720p, Quake 4 and Halo 2... and I bought it in 2006... oh well
 
rjcalifornia said:
Well, I was talking about iBooks :)

One thing I hate is that Apple is now brading ebooks as 'ibooks' :(
Click to expand...

I was livestreaming when that happened and I did an involuntary spit take (because I really wasn't paying that much attention) when I heard they say ibooks at the end of a sentence
 
If I may, I think what we have here is akin to cars.

There was a golden era of muscle cars, just like with Apple. The way I am looking at it is the PowerPC Mac belongs to that age. The Mustangs, Camaros, Firebirds, Chargers and so on of the late 60s, early 70s, etc.

The Intel Macs are the latest versions of these old muscle cars. Or, a tuner, if you prefer.

The old cars do the job. They still look good, they perform well and if you get a really good one it can simply be stunning. The new cars are flashy, high performance, have the latest innovations, handle well and have all new body styles.

It just depends on which era you're looking at. There are places where you show up in a classic car and heads will turn. Other places you might be looked at sideways for driving something that's not new, even though it looks like it's off the showroom floor.

My point in all of this is that there are indeed two camps and a third that crosses over. I'm in the group that crosses over because I need high performance and the latest in innovation at work. But when it comes to my personal driver, my PowerPC Macs are enough.

And as I've mentioned before, I don't tire of the looks of "what's that" when I pull my Macs out at Starbucks. In a sea of MBs and MBPs and the occasional Dell, HP or Sony, I stand out.
 
rjcalifornia said:
Don't really care much about retina. However I would love to have 6 GB of RAM on my laptop. I will never understand why Apple never allowed 3 GB of RAM for iBook G4...

BTW my ibook and my main desktop machine have the same amount of RAM ;) But it can play 1080p, Youtube at 720p, Quake 4 and Halo 2... and I bought it in 2006... oh well
Click to expand...
I am always wondering, why so many people talk about things I can not do. I have a higher specked ibook G4, than your PowerBook and I can't watch 1080p. I guess I am just too stupid and do not know how to use stuff :rolleyes:
Intell said:
The G4's memory controller can't access more than 2GB of ram.
Click to expand...
I wonder, if the ibooks/powerbooks with presoldered RAM under 1GB could be tinkered to accept the whole 2GB. Like soldering a 1GB RAM instead of the lets say 512MB presoldered, the rest 1GB would of course go to the "user servicable" RAM slot.
ihuman:D said:
Not for their time. :rolleyes: Anyway, later models could support up to 4GB (I think).
Click to expand...
But no G4. There are G5s that can only accept 4GB, I know for sure the Dual 1,8GHz PCI (not PCI-X, the latter can accept 8GB) and the Single 1,6GHz G5 can only take 4GB (the Dual 1,8GHz has only four slots, but there is space where the other four would usually be).

----------------------------
I am always between nostalgia and "what if...", when I think about my PowerMacs. I have an iMac G3, which was my first ever computer (didn't ever possess a Win-PC). Takes away space on my small desktop and I have faster PowerPC Macs even, if I would use it only for playing, but then again I just can let it go and I also ca not put it in its original box. Once a year over the new year's holidays I play Master of Orion on it, though I could easily play it in classic mode on my ibook G4.
Then I have my ibook, which I use for daily web browsing. Because I am a bit of a cheap person, so I do not power up my PowerMac for web browsing (all though the outcome of the electricity bill at the end of thee year would not hit the roof). Then while web browsing (having tested TFF, Sunrise, Omniweb, Seamonkey, Camino, icab and gotten back to Safari and FF), I sometimes open mails, may sister sends to let me show pictures to relatives, that are at my place. Sometimes I have to say "wait a second". Everyone is used to click and see, email attachments of big foto files.
There are very few site, that I visit for myself, that have long loading times and then the inner monologue starts "hm, if... I would get me an Intel-Mac, I could save bits of time. Would that be much at the end of the year? Hm, but which one then? iMac? No firewire400 for my audiointerface - I dare not think one minute about connecting a thunderbolt adapter to FW800 to FW400 (latencies?). MacMini? Hm, FW800 to FW400 adapter, at least acceptable, but than again price versus power compared to the iMacs?" A Macbook Air/Pro is a price-performance looser for me, too, because I wanted the next computer I ever buy to be a desktop and hooking up a display to a laptop is somehow crippled, too. I am so used to 5:4 on my ibook, that I find even the 15" Macbook Pro's display to be unbearable squeezed and small. Well, OK, actually I do not have a need for a new machine, my software is outdated, but still does the job and on the other hand, I do not want to get a feeling of neglecting my old Macs. Then, I think, well ok next time, in a year or two I will make the move, when I really need to... and so it goes on and on.

What is sometimes forcing patience is converting video, but since that is for private use, well I can live with that.

There is another thing. Mac OS, which is, from the way you do things the same on PPC and Intel (I guess). My brother sometimes tells me "oh that Windows 8 of my wife has that thing, that things happen, when you move the cursor in one corner or the other. That's annoying" I say "well that is "active corners" I have this on Mac OS X, I do not remember since what of the first versions, I could tell you go to system preferences and your done, but sorry I can't help you with that Windows8". This applies to several features. :) (I do not say, that Windows is bad, I just say, I can have those "new" features without spending extra cash on new stuff.).

If my post sounds stupid or to emotional or like a "Intel is bad... Win is bad...".type of guy, please forgive me it is not intended that way. :)
 
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Cox Orange said:
I wonder, if the ibooks/powerbooks with presoldered RAM under 1GB could be tinkered to accept the whole 2GB. Like soldering a 1GB RAM instead of the lets say 512MB presoldered, the rest 1GB would of course go to the "user servicable" RAM slot.
Click to expand...

I don't think enough pads exist on the logicboard to get enough ram to get near the 2GB mark.
 
eyoungren said:
If I may, I think what we have here is akin to cars.

There was a golden era of muscle cars, just like with Apple. The way I am looking at it is the PowerPC Mac belongs to that age. The Mustangs, Camaros, Firebirds, Chargers and so on of the late 60s, early 70s, etc.

The Intel Macs are the latest versions of these old muscle cars. Or, a tuner, if you prefer.

The old cars do the job. They still look good, they perform well and if you get a really good one it can simply be stunning. The new cars are flashy, high performance, have the latest innovations, handle well and have all new body styles.

It just depends on which era you're looking at. There are places where you show up in a classic car and heads will turn. Other places you might be looked at sideways for driving something that's not new, even though it looks like it's off the showroom floor.

My point in all of this is that there are indeed two camps and a third that crosses over. I'm in the group that crosses over because I need high performance and the latest in innovation at work. But when it comes to my personal driver, my PowerPC Macs are enough.

And as I've mentioned before, I don't tire of the looks of "what's that" when I pull my Macs out at Starbucks. In a sea of MBs and MBPs and the occasional Dell, HP or Sony, I stand out.
Click to expand...

Oh yeah, I understand, why would I need a Ferrari if I only need a car to drive from home to work and grocery shopping. :)

I love my ibook, it is just sometimes I wish I could use a 4GB stick on it...
 
By models I didn't mean Macs, I meant the actual G4 CPU and later models actually do support up to 4GB, check out the e600s specs sheet.
 
Some of the stuff in this thread are complete nonsense lol.

At the end of the day, if you can do all your work/meet your needs on a computer, is there really a reason to change? The only reason i'm using this macbookPro is because apple messed up and replaced my Powerbook, and in lots of ways id rather still have my Powerbook, it was a MUCH MUCH nicer computer than this MacBookPro.But i now have enough computer for a long time to come. And being able to VM windows comes in handy.

I've still got a 500Mhz Powermac G4 sat under my desk, i use it all the time as a normal desktop, Email/Music/Word and Web browsing.

I've also just brought home an iMac G5 that needs a cap replacing from my local Hackspace, we were sorting machines to go on electronics benches for reference for data sheets etc. I'll sort the cap, put tiger on it, and then when people need to read their data PDF's they can on a nice machine.

It just comes down to what you want to do on your computer.
 
They're not paperweights technically, mine does office work and browsing... it's great for what it needs to do but would I want one for a main computer? No thank you, I'd rather have an old Pentium IV PC over a PowerPC Mac to be honest.
 
Here is a comparison I made between older pentium 4 based pc setups vs powerpc setups and heres what I found


dell_370.jpg


dual processor dell pc workstation
Dual 3.0Ghz Xeons
8gb ddr1 ram
8 sata 1 hdd bays
8800gt 512mb
dual ide superdrives

Pros. Faster clockspeed, overclockable
better graphics card support
better dvd burning capabilitys

Cons. Video editing your going to be stuck on jahshacka or some other free program that crashes every 4 minutes if you can't afford premiere and they finally catch up to you on those free trials

vs.

200px-Power_Mac_G5_hero_left.jpg



Dual processor apple workstation
Dual 2.0Ghz PowerPC g5s
8gb ddr1 ram
2 sata 1 hdd bays
6800 ultra 256mb
single ide superdrive


Pros. OS X 10.5.8
Better for video editing with Final cut pro

Cons. Slower clock speed non overclockable
only 2 hdd bays for christs sake
worse graphics card support
terrible if you do a ton of dvd burning



conclusion. buy what meets your needs
 
good comparison, lets talk to the actual value of each computer, and the reliability of the system.
if someone prefer a Pentium IV... lucky! they are thousands for less than 100 $ on ebay waiting for new owners.

i still dont know why people how loves the powerpcs keep them as treasures. :D
 
Lil Chillbil said:
Here is a comparison I made between older pentium 4 based pc setups vs powerpc setups and heres what I found


Image

dual processor dell pc workstation
Dual 3.0Ghz Xeons
8gb ddr1 ram
8 sata 1 hdd bays
8800gt 512mb
dual ide superdrives

Pros. Faster clockspeed, overclockable
better graphics card support
better dvd burning capabilitys

Cons. Video editing your going to be stuck on jahshacka or some other free program that crashes every 4 minutes if you can't afford premiere and they finally catch up to you on those free trials

vs.

Image


Dual processor apple workstation
Dual 2.0Ghz PowerPC g5s
8gb ddr1 ram
2 sata 1 hdd bays
6800 ultra 256mb
single ide superdrive


Pros. OS X 10.5.8
Better for video editing with Final cut pro

Cons. Slower clock speed non overclockable
only 2 hdd bays for christs sake
worse graphics card support
terrible if you do a ton of dvd burning



conclusion. buy what meets your needs
Click to expand...

I guess something must be wrong there.or aren't the specs from the era?
Sorry but if you have a 8800 you won't have IDE drives nor DDR1.
I had a p4 3.2 prescott (9600pro agp,512 ddr1,160 sata) and even in that time sata was main stream.Dual xenons and pci-e would take DDR2 afaik.
Just choose what you like most =)
 
My MDD G4 is currently just holding a basket of stuff, it doesn't work anymore :( But the G5 still does! Unfortunately, the monitor that I was using with it got rained on, so I'm not using it right now.
 
skinniezinho said:
I guess something must be wrong there.or aren't the specs from the era?
Sorry but if you have a 8800 you won't have IDE drives nor DDR1.
I had a p4 3.2 prescott (9600pro agp,512 ddr1,160 sata) and even in that time sata was main stream.Dual xenons and pci-e would take DDR2 afaik.
Just choose what you like most =)
Click to expand...

the mac pro even uses ide dvd drives :rolleyes:
 
rabidz7 said:
Yes it can. Apples firmware has limits to make sure that no one can access over 2GB of RAM, but that is the firmware not the memory controller.
Click to expand...

No it can't. The CPU might be able to, but the memory controller is designed by Apple not Motorola. It only has enough registers to be able to access 2GB of ram. Not a nibble more. The machine's OpenFirmware doesn't have a listing for limiting the ram access.
 
Intell said:
No it can't. The CPU might be able to, but the memory controller is designed by Apple not Motorola. It only has enough registers to be able to access 2GB of ram. Not a nibble more. The machine's OpenFirmware doesn't have a listing for limiting the ram access.
Click to expand...

I stand corrected. I must have been thinking of the IBM designed northbridge for the G5, which in datasheets can handle up to 64GB of RAM.
 
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