Performance of iBook

[fow99]

All,

As the title asks, what is the equivelant performance of an iBook to an intel/amd based
laptop? I currently own an Sony Vaio with Duron 700 + 128 RAM. Say I was to buy a
iBook with 1G + 256RAM. Am I expecting a big performance gain, experience wise?


Any input welcomed.


Thanks,

 

[Fatt]

That's a problematic question. In raw numbers you definitely will get a big gain because that 1ghz G4 chip is about a powerful as a P4 with a clock speed of about 1.5 to 2.0ghz, and it varies with what you are doing because the architecture is different and can't truly be compared directly in a meaningful way. Sure, you can benchmark the two chips against each other, but benchmarks is only of limited value in terms of real world "feel".
Also, Windows often "feels" faster in stuff like web browsing for software reasons that I wont pretend to understand.
In general, as long as you're OK with learning the ins & outs of OSX, you'll be pretty happy with both the power and the OS. Make sure you use 10.2 or later. It's a vast improvement over 10.1 and is light years ahead of 10.0, plus it has some really nice built in tools. Not to mention that macs aren't as vulnerable to exploits and hacks as windows, partially because BSD unix is more secure inherantly, and partly because there really aren't large numbers of people going after them.

 

[fow99]

Thanks for the input.
So I take that the raw power of the G4 is quite good.
Does that mean if I install Linux PPC on it, it would run
something like a P4?

 

[Yoshi]

I think it's safe to say that it will fell snappier than a 700Mhz Duron. It will also be fast for any vector operations that have been optimized for Altivec in the G4. A couple of examples of this would be encoding video or applying a filter in photoshop.

iBook's are cool, nothing like a Unix workstation in your backpack.

 

[Fatt]

I dunno Fow, I've never tried it.
I did run Yellow Dog Linux on my G3 Wallstreet, but now I'm running X.2