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Apple Gives Laptops Speed Bumps
sockit2me9000 writes "Apple released their new PowerBook today. They include faster processors across the board (up to 1GHz), Radeon 9000 GPUs, and the top-of-the-line model will include a slot-loading SuperDrive. Price points remain about the same. New iBook was released as well."
All laptops are now $200(USD) cheaper than before.
You can return them. Apple has a 10 day return policy (if they're opened though, you'll have to pay a restock fee).
Hey, Pudge, where I live, speed bumps are used to slow people down. I couldn't figure out why in the hell Apple would want to slow their laptops down.
Mayhaps you were looking for "speed boost" or "speed increase"?
Be advised that Apple (well, the Apple Store) has a "no return" policy if you change any configuration, such as adding more memory or a bigger hard drive.
I know this because I wanted to exchange my 15" iMac for a 17" iMac. They didn't want to do it because I had ordered my iMac with extra memory. I had to talk to a manager who not only accepted the exchange, but waived the stocking fee. Their staff was courteous and professional, but persistence pays.
MOSR has been irrelevant in the rumors "industry" (in my opinion) since they completely missed the boat on the iMac all those years ago. Their "rumors" tend to come from pie-eyed "what-if" scenarios snarfed form IRC these days.
There's much better Mac rumor sites out there - MacRumors and Macslash being two of them.
Come to the University of Mars! Classes starting soon!
Well not quite. They still have the original iMac for $799. So the iBook can be thought of as the most expensive G3 they sell.
IMHO a 1Ghz G4 is about the same as a 4Ghz P4 in speed.
lol
come on now, that's just silly and you know it. the length of pipeline does not a processor make (or some stupid thing like that)
IMHO I am the sexiest man alive. But, in reality, it seems that most (all?) women don't agree.
Casual Games/Downloads
yeh, not to mention that the bottom of the range laptop costs $999 in the US and £849 in the UK (more than US$1300).
"Because it's there." - George Mallory, when asked why he wanted to climb Mt Everest, March 18, 1923 (New York Times)
You haven't done it, have you? Easy as pie. Pop off the keyboard. On the TiBook, you will see the 2 slots. On the iBook, you need to remove the Airport card (if installed), and 2 small screws to remove the cover over the memory slot. Even if you don't know what you are doing, it doesn't take more than 10 minutes.
In fact, I think there is a diagram on the bottom of the keyboard to help you. There are definitely directions in the owners manual.
--
The internet is the greatest source of biased information in the history of mankind.
Actually, while normally outrageously expensive, apple memory happens to be pretty cheap right now. You can double the ram in any system for $40. Bumping the TiBook from 512MB of RAM to a gig of RAM for $40 sounds like a pretty sweet deal to me. Bumping the 256MB iBook to 512MB for $40 doesn't sound bad either.
Actually, apple has had always had good stuff like this, everybody just sees the price and doesn't bother to check the specs
Also Mac's do have a longer life then most other computers Iv worked w/
I once read a quote that said a mac has a useful life of 8-10 years, at that I laughed my head off, until I realized I wuz reading it on my PPC from 95(only thing that's gone out in that time is the monitor...)
Don't save your orgasms for Heaven; Heaven knows we need them here.
So as not to be a complete ass, the first link from that article as a statement that a P4 overclocked to 3.9GHz (wow--he used liquid nitrogen) was only able to do 4.9 Gigaflops. A dual-G4 1GHz did 15 Gigaflops...
There's no place I can be, since I found Serenity.
US version
$2299 867mhz
$2799 cdrw
$2999 superdrive
European version
2988 867mhz
3682 cdrw
3945 superdrive
IF you can get a flight for less than $1000 you're saving money.
If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
The lower classes need something affordable, dependable, and proven, and for this reason we will continue to stick with PC manufacturers such as GateWay 2000 and DELL. I hope Apple figures this out soon.
(Gateway dropped the "2000" bit three years ago.)
The lowest priced iBook is $999. Dell's lowest priced model is $899, and Gateway's lowest priced model is $999. They've hardly got Apple beat on the "value laptop" end.
And, like a different poster said... if you're sturggling along doing dock work, what do you need a shiney new laptop for?
Yes. Also, if you download something like DVDBackup and use it to copy the DVD to your hard drive before your trip, the Apple DVD player can play it from there, which will probably consume less power than spinning the DVD drive would.
Some of them definitely work - the question comes up on the darwin-developers list regularly. There's a /dev entry for serial devices & also the XServe has a fully-working serial port on the back of the machine. So yeah, MacOS X natively supports serial ....
Alison
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." - Albert Einstein
The current iBooks use the new IBM 750fx "G3" CPU's. What's holding them back is *marketing* - the 750fx goes up to 1GHz (25% faster) with 200MHz (100% faster) bus, but Apple's too afraid of eating into (more profitable) TiBook sales to ship faster iBooks.
IBM did a *really* nice job designing the 750fx CPU. Back in May/June (when Apple introduced it in the iBook) one of the Apple hardware sites did some G3(750fx) vs. G4(Moto) comparison benchmarks. Bottom line: for anything that wasn't written to use AltiVec, the IBM G3 was just as fast as the Moto G4 (at same MHz).
Weak video systems really slowed older iBooks down in (eye-candy-full) OSX. It's far less a problem in the new iBooks.
Understand what you'll be using it for and do your homework BEFORE spending the $$$ to get a G4.
It's easy to make up & spread cool- and credible-sounding stuff. Finding & checking hard facts is hard work.
Apple has said several times at shareholder meeting that they will not adopt USB 2.0. Generally speaking, Apple feels that it alone is responsible for the success of USB 1.0 in the first place, and therefore is pissed that Intel would target their FireWire technology with USB 2.0. Essentially, Apple feels as if Intel is backstabbing them.
All that said, I don't see FireWire going anywhere. I do see it redefining its niche to be purely high-bandwidth applications such as video cameras and very fast external drives. Do remember, however, that FireWire 2 is due very soon and will literally double the bandwidth. Could change things considerably.
The PowerBooks are pretty easy to work on. I've upgraded the Harddrive, memory, and recently even swapped the g3/400 processor card for a g4/500 card in my Bronze Powerbook. The processor upgrade took 15 minutes which included the time required to watch the quicktime video that stepped through the process..
Actually, if you're a student in the US, you can get a high-end TiBook for $2400! You just need to pay for a 1 year membership as a student developer ($99), and then you can order through their ADC Hardware Purchase Program.
Details:
Student Developer Membership
Student Hardware Purchase Program
TiBook in the Hardware Purchase Program
IBM makes the G3 chips Apple uses and Mot makes Apple's G4s. AltiVec is something by and from Mot only. Apparently the G5/PPC970 will implement something very much like it, a clone, at this point IBM doesn't have the rights to AltiVec.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
Firewire also offers things like isosynchronous transfers, and a more flexible chaining topology.
...Firewire's life is and will be driven by DV cameras not external disks. As long as the cam manufacturers continue to use Firewire (and Sony is going to, rest assured), then USB will not kill Firewire.
Besides, recent test results have shown that USB may not be the Firewire killer it's touted to be in real-world situations.
- I am made of meat.
I run a 700mhz ibook with the radeon w/16mb vram. Jaguar is certainly not as fast as windows is on my desktop, but it is still a load faster than 10.1.5 . I do in fact have Quartz Extreme as well.
What we see depends on mainly what we look for. -- John Lubbock Now search for that bug slave!
USB 2.0 has a PEAK transfer of 480 mbps, whilst firewire has a SUSTAINED transfer of 400 mbps. As the other poster at my level also stated, firewire also chains better, is more consistent in its speed and generally is better for high bandwidth purposes. USB 2, while it has gained some support in external hard drives and CD-Rs, is still an inferior product that was created more for political reasons.
USB belongs on the low bandwidth end (mice, webcams, keyboards) whilst higher transfer devices should be firewire (digital camcorders, iPod, hard drives).
Heh, I don't even own a Mac and I'm praising firewire, lol!