Upgrade from Powerbook to MacBook Pro

C

cwit

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I'm about to upgrade from a 1.5 GHz Powerbook with 2G ram to a 2.2 GHz Macbook Pro with 2G ram. I am going to include a 160 rather than 120 HD. Am I going to be blown away, impressed or just satisfied? Any suggestions. I am not a heavy movie editor or gamer but do some Photoshop/Canvas, light number crunching (Excel), Lots of Keynote/powerpoint but few with embedded movies.

Interested in your comments. Thanks.

Curt
 
Maybe not in Excel - it's running through Rosetta. However, the Universal release of Office is coming out sometime in 2008. You should have 2 GB of RAM minimum for good performance.
 
Watch out for Photoshop! Lost Photoshop 7 when I upgraded to Leopard. Someone on another forum said that CS2 is dead too.

It's going to cost me $299 to upgrade to CS3!
 
In order to achieve maximum being blown away momentum, you'll want your software to be Universal, i.e. contain native intel code. As has been mentioned by Eric and SGilbert, Adobe's apps only are Universal with the CS3 line, Microsoft Office 2008 will be Universal. Check whatever else you need...

Emulated PPC apps still run, but require quite a bit of memory and don't perform at native speed. (Still: It's not *that* bad an experience.) By now, most software developers offer some kind of upgrade to a Universal version either free or at a cost, Adobe (money) and Microsoft (not yet available unless you're in the beta programme) being the "baddies".
 
I went from the last PB (1.67 G4, 2GB) to the MackBook Pro (2.33 Core2Duo, 2GB) and saw a noticeable speed improvement. Apps like Photoshop CS2 and InDesign CS2 load slower, but once loaded run as fast as they did on the PB. Some tasks in PS might even be quicker, but not by much.

Universal Apps make a huge difference.

Call of Duty under rosetta runs better on the MBP than it did on the PowerBook, with the exception of a crash here or there rarely. Speedwise its faster and less choppy though...I really don't understand this. Would have expected something entirely different.
 
Thanks for the input. I see I will be laying out some cash for software to feel the power. Other than that it sounds like the overall experience is good. I am not unhappy with my PB but I would like to see a noticeable bump for my $2k. I also have a tendency to do a lot of multitasking and so would probably profit from extra ram.

Curt
 
Yes, extra RAM is a must, really. The nice thing about it is that Rosetta will actually use the extra-amount of RAM. And once you go Universal, the apps not only feel faster because they're running natively, they also have more RAM available, because they can get rid of that Rosetta-thread per application.
 
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