Laptop Choice

[Qion]

I have to admit... I've fallen in love with laptops. Working with desktops all my life desensitized me to the wonders of working with a portable machine. At least, until my Wallstreet...

I've decided that in the near future, I'm selling all three of my Macs in order to gain a workhorse laptop. I need to make a decision, however: on eBay, a 1.83 MacBook w/ 512MB of RAM = a 1.67 15" PowerBook w/ 1.25GB of RAM. I could afford either, but the choice is extremely difficult. I want to lean towards the PowerBook's superior graphics card, screen real estate, superior resolution, and more professional style; However, I also want to lean towards the MacBook's speedy processor(s) and utility longevity-wise. I could care less about the Intel switch, but if that's going to harm me in the long run, I don't want to chance a lot of money.

My work revolves around Photoshop, Illustrator, and Ableton Live. These are fairly processor dependent programs, but they are also screen quality dependent programs. I'm partial to the PowerBook, but what do you guys think?

[powermac]

I would favor the Powerbook as well.

[fryke]

Buying into past technology is not what I'd do. that glorious graphics chip is not worth that much, btw., unless you want to play games of a certain age (i.e. you won't play new highend games on that PowerBook now, anyway). Since you probably use the 'book for a year or two, I'd buy the MacBook.

[Qion]

Well ok Fryke, I know that you have one of these, so what's your opinion on peformance, aesthetics, and screen quality?

[powermac]

I don't want to answer for Fryke, but the quality of the iBook is excellent, from what I heard. In my opinion you are not going to have a useless G4 computer is a couple of years.

[fryke]

While working with "old" software (Rosetta-emulated) is only about on-par compared to my old PB 15" G4 1.33 GHz, it's definitely faster in most everyday tasks. Things like... Well: If, say, you select a dozen JPEGs in Tiger's Finder, you can let it make a slideshow of the pix through the contextual menu. On my old G4, the Finder always took a _LOT_ of time before actually letting me do that. With the intel, this is instant. Similar things happen all the time. I get the feeling that either intel's processors are much better at these tasks - or that the team at Apple porting OS X to intel actually fixed the Finder!
I'm aware of the fact that some important software simply isn't native yet on intel Macs (like Adobe CS/CS2 and Office), but for most tasks, the little machine is perfectly capable with enough RAM - software emulated or not. And this is only going to get _better_, since over time, we'll be less and less dependent on Rosetta-emulation. That's performance.
Aesthetics: the MacBook is very sleek, thin. When I had both the 15" AluBook and the MacBook at home here, it just seemed that the bigger one looked oddly too big.
Screen quality: The MacBook's screen is much brighter than an older PB's screen. The glare thing? Not a problem unless you have a spot aimed on the screen over your shoulder. I'm sure you can make sure that this does _not_ happen. But the best thing is _outside_ in the sun. Ever since active-matrix greyscale displays, this is the _FIRST_ notebook screen I've ever seen work outside! A PB G4's screen looks like it's simply turned off when you're out in the sun. Only if you look very closely, you can maybe make out a black dot in a white field, but forget about seeing *ANY* colour besides black and white. Contrast fades to nothing.

Heat-wise, I'd say that both the PB G4 as well as the MacBook are not really heroes. But while the MacBook simply gets too hot, the Alu being metal makes both a hot and a cold PowerBook feel _worse_. The white plastic's much better.

[Qion]

Thanks guys.

I'll probably end up with a MacBook. I'll just hang on to my 19" graphics monitor for editing and generally doing things at home, where I need more screen real estate. I've very happy I posted here first, because I would have gone with the PowerBook...

It's going to be quite different working on a machine that's, what, 80x faster than my current eMac!?