Hi,
I don't want to start a fight here, but I've been fortunate enough to have had two laptops this last week.
1) 15" Powerbook: 1.33GHz, 768MB RAM, Radeon 9700 64MB, 80GB HD - 5400 rpm)
2) HP zt3131: 15" display, 1.6GHz P-M, 512 MB, Radeon 9200 64MB, 60GB HD - 4200 rpm)
And I've been reading a lot of questions about "how fast is the G4 compared to a PC?" So I thought it would be a good idea to write down some of my impressions from this last week. But first, a little bit of background information. The reason I have two laptops is that I want a portable computer for Photoshop, web design and normal office applications. Since I have a 1,33GHz T-bird on my desktop computer which satisfy my "need for speed", I don't need a screamingly fast notebook. All I'm looking for is something that's enjoyable to use and "fast enough". As for OS X vs. XP, I don't really care. XP has been good to me, never had any troubles. I use a firewall and anti-virus software, and that takes care of whatever is floating around out there.
I will not be presenting numbers here. No benchmarks, no fps. Just impressions.
The programs I normally use are:
- Photoshop 7
- Macromedia Studio MX 2004
- MS Office
Photoshop 7
This was actually much more of a close call than I would have expected. The HP was faster, but we're not talking about different leagues here. Mostly I just do small stuff, I'm not using 20 filters.
Macromedia Studio MX 2004
Oh my, where should I begin? Fireworks is more or less OK on both machines. Flash was slow on the Powerbook. Not unusable, but not really what I did expect from ANY 1.33GHz machine, G4 or Pentium. Dreamweaver, well let's take a closer look at that one. Now, some of you may know that there is an upgrade available from Macromedia. This was supposed to take care of some of the problems people had when running the software on a Mac. When I say problems I'm reffering to the fact that it was dog slow. I downloaded this upgrade before I even opened the program. But even then Dreamweaver was a complete turkey. I really should have videotaped it. All you guys (and girls) who are using Dreamweaver on a Windows machine - you ain't seen nuthin'! It was hilarious! I constantly had to ask myself what I was doing, did I actually open that menu, or didn't I? Hmmm.................... Oh, there it is. I timed it, 7 seconds to open a menu! Importing pictures from Fireworks? Have a cup of coffee while you wait... At one point I had 7-8 windows open at the same time, and I wanted to save all files - I might as well have flown to Columbia and picked the coffee beans myself. It actually felt like I was running the program on a Celeron 300 with 64 MB RAM. I'm not kidding you.
The HP flew through this suite. No problems.
I've spent some time on different Mac forums, and this seems to be the consensus - Dreamweaver is more or less unusable on the Mac. So I'm not going to hang this one on Apple, this is clearly a Macromedia issue.
Games
I installed a couple of demos on the Powerbook - UT2004 and Halo. Even with the Radeon 9700 I had to lower the resolution and settings to play them at all. And it was not what you would call fun. The HP managed to play UT2004 at native resolution (1280x800), while I had to lower res/settings to be able to enjoy Halo. Well, we all knew, didn't we?
MS Office
No problems on either of the machines, and the Mac version looks better too! When opening a couple of large spreadsheets (55,000 rows) I did notice that the HP was faster. In normal use I don't think it will matter at all.
To sum it all up
The P-M's got more "ooomph", there's no question about it. On some tasks you will notice it, on others it's hardly worth mentioning.
But if you look around, you'll see all these Mac users beeing totally happy with their machines. How can that be? Well, one thing I noticed when I compared the Powerbook to my desktop was that it is good at multitasking. Since I only have 256MB of RAM on my desktop machine, I usually will experience slowdowns. Not crashing, but the machine will spend a little while in it's own world and I'll have to watch and wait before doing anything else. Not so with the Powerbook, I could always switch to other programs, open new ones, etc. I'm trying not to use the word "flow", but the Powerbook feels like a "smooth ride". It just keeps on grinding, albeit slower than the P-M.
How will I be able to pick one?
Let's see what we've got... We have one machine (HP) that will handle whatever I throw at it. It's running an OS that I'm familiar with (and like) - Windows XP, it is solidly built, weighs about 3 kg's and I can even play games on it. On the other hand I have a "slower" machine, which will not run Dreamweaver (one of the programs I need to use, and it costs more. Shouldn't be too hard to decide, eh? Well, I'm having problems... I think I'm in love with the Powerbook. I'm actually considering switching to hand coding html just to keep it. And it's bugging me. The rational part of my brain keeps telling me to get the HP (since it actually does what I need a notebook to do (and more!), but my heart tells me to keep the Powerbook. And this is not because the HP is ugly or anything. It's a little bit bigger than the Powerbook, but not enough for it to be an issue.
At the end of the day, I can't really see myself picking up the Powerbook. To me it's not worth it, buying a new computer that's incapable of running the software I want. IF Macroemedia had done a better job with the MX 2004 suite, I might have chosen differently. So the Mac is going back (borrowed it from out IT dept.). The HP stays.
To those of you that took the time to read through this, I would appreciate your comments.
I don't want to start a fight here, but I've been fortunate enough to have had two laptops this last week.
1) 15" Powerbook: 1.33GHz, 768MB RAM, Radeon 9700 64MB, 80GB HD - 5400 rpm)
2) HP zt3131: 15" display, 1.6GHz P-M, 512 MB, Radeon 9200 64MB, 60GB HD - 4200 rpm)
And I've been reading a lot of questions about "how fast is the G4 compared to a PC?" So I thought it would be a good idea to write down some of my impressions from this last week. But first, a little bit of background information. The reason I have two laptops is that I want a portable computer for Photoshop, web design and normal office applications. Since I have a 1,33GHz T-bird on my desktop computer which satisfy my "need for speed", I don't need a screamingly fast notebook. All I'm looking for is something that's enjoyable to use and "fast enough". As for OS X vs. XP, I don't really care. XP has been good to me, never had any troubles. I use a firewall and anti-virus software, and that takes care of whatever is floating around out there.
I will not be presenting numbers here. No benchmarks, no fps. Just impressions.
The programs I normally use are:
- Photoshop 7
- Macromedia Studio MX 2004
- MS Office
Photoshop 7
This was actually much more of a close call than I would have expected. The HP was faster, but we're not talking about different leagues here. Mostly I just do small stuff, I'm not using 20 filters.
Macromedia Studio MX 2004
Oh my, where should I begin? Fireworks is more or less OK on both machines. Flash was slow on the Powerbook. Not unusable, but not really what I did expect from ANY 1.33GHz machine, G4 or Pentium. Dreamweaver, well let's take a closer look at that one. Now, some of you may know that there is an upgrade available from Macromedia. This was supposed to take care of some of the problems people had when running the software on a Mac. When I say problems I'm reffering to the fact that it was dog slow. I downloaded this upgrade before I even opened the program. But even then Dreamweaver was a complete turkey. I really should have videotaped it. All you guys (and girls) who are using Dreamweaver on a Windows machine - you ain't seen nuthin'! It was hilarious! I constantly had to ask myself what I was doing, did I actually open that menu, or didn't I? Hmmm.................... Oh, there it is. I timed it, 7 seconds to open a menu! Importing pictures from Fireworks? Have a cup of coffee while you wait... At one point I had 7-8 windows open at the same time, and I wanted to save all files - I might as well have flown to Columbia and picked the coffee beans myself. It actually felt like I was running the program on a Celeron 300 with 64 MB RAM. I'm not kidding you.
The HP flew through this suite. No problems.
I've spent some time on different Mac forums, and this seems to be the consensus - Dreamweaver is more or less unusable on the Mac. So I'm not going to hang this one on Apple, this is clearly a Macromedia issue.
Games
I installed a couple of demos on the Powerbook - UT2004 and Halo. Even with the Radeon 9700 I had to lower the resolution and settings to play them at all. And it was not what you would call fun. The HP managed to play UT2004 at native resolution (1280x800), while I had to lower res/settings to be able to enjoy Halo. Well, we all knew, didn't we?
MS Office
No problems on either of the machines, and the Mac version looks better too! When opening a couple of large spreadsheets (55,000 rows) I did notice that the HP was faster. In normal use I don't think it will matter at all.
To sum it all up
The P-M's got more "ooomph", there's no question about it. On some tasks you will notice it, on others it's hardly worth mentioning.
But if you look around, you'll see all these Mac users beeing totally happy with their machines. How can that be? Well, one thing I noticed when I compared the Powerbook to my desktop was that it is good at multitasking. Since I only have 256MB of RAM on my desktop machine, I usually will experience slowdowns. Not crashing, but the machine will spend a little while in it's own world and I'll have to watch and wait before doing anything else. Not so with the Powerbook, I could always switch to other programs, open new ones, etc. I'm trying not to use the word "flow", but the Powerbook feels like a "smooth ride". It just keeps on grinding, albeit slower than the P-M.
How will I be able to pick one?
Let's see what we've got... We have one machine (HP) that will handle whatever I throw at it. It's running an OS that I'm familiar with (and like) - Windows XP, it is solidly built, weighs about 3 kg's and I can even play games on it. On the other hand I have a "slower" machine, which will not run Dreamweaver (one of the programs I need to use, and it costs more. Shouldn't be too hard to decide, eh? Well, I'm having problems... I think I'm in love with the Powerbook. I'm actually considering switching to hand coding html just to keep it. And it's bugging me. The rational part of my brain keeps telling me to get the HP (since it actually does what I need a notebook to do (and more!), but my heart tells me to keep the Powerbook. And this is not because the HP is ugly or anything. It's a little bit bigger than the Powerbook, but not enough for it to be an issue.
At the end of the day, I can't really see myself picking up the Powerbook. To me it's not worth it, buying a new computer that's incapable of running the software I want. IF Macroemedia had done a better job with the MX 2004 suite, I might have chosen differently. So the Mac is going back (borrowed it from out IT dept.). The HP stays.
To those of you that took the time to read through this, I would appreciate your comments.
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