Any Mac users? (1 Viewer)

[Mark Hamilton]

Hey all!

My notebook (a Compaq Presario 1810 [300Mhz PII, 13.3" TFT, 64mb RAM, 6.4gb HDD, 2.4x DVD-ROM]) turns five this winter and it's served me long and extremely well. But I'd like to get a new notebook to replace it in the spring. I'v been leaning towards Apple's Powerbook lineup. I'v been doing research all over the web and they seem to be great machines, but unfortunetly I can't find any quality Macintosh forums. Are there any?

Secondly, do any of you Mac users have much experience with Virtual PC? I intend to use it if I get a Mac, but I'v never used it before. Is it fast enough for typical applications?

Thanks guys!

 

[Michael*K]

The PowerBooks are great machines. VirtualPC isn't great, but depending on your needs, it might be able to get the job done. Don't buy it if you intend on playing PC games or any other processor intensive software. It does run most business software just fine. It is an absolute memory hog and you want to make sure you max out the memory on any machine VirtualPC is running on. I love the 12" PowerBook, but it's not really appropriate for running VirtualPC frequently, the reason being that the lack of a Level 3 cache and the low max memory capacity (640MB) leaves it underpowered.

As for good Mac forums and news sites, try:

MacNN
Apple Discussions
MacInTouch
Accelerate Your Mac
Mac Observer
Think Secret
Mac Rumors
MacCentral
MacAddict

 

[Mark Hamilton]

Awesome, thanks!

Yeah, the 12" PB is the perfect form factor, and with a Superdrive, 640mb of RAM, and the 60gb HDD, it would prolly be fine for what I want to use it for (DV Capture/Edit, word processing, web creation, image manipulation, web surfing). However, as you pointed out, the lack of L3 cache would hinder Virtual PC's performance significantly, and as a current Windows NT user I can't imagine abandoning the Microsoft OS completely, at least not yet.

I'm tempted to wait until early next year to see what surprises Apple might have in store. I suspect L3 cache, a bigger HDD, and a Superdrive will be standard fare across the entire PB lineup. However, I am mostly interested in RAM expansion oppurtunities. I'd love to get a G5 equiped PB next year, but I can't imagine seeing those selling until at least this time in 2004.

 

[Joseph S]

Yeah, the 12" PB is the perfect form factor, and with a Superdrive, 640mb of RAM, and the 60gb HDD, it would prolly be fine for what I want to use it for (DV Capture/Edit, word processing, web creation, image manipulation, web surfing). However, as you pointed out, the lack of L3 cache would hinder Virtual PC's performance significantly, and as a current Windows NT user I can't imagine abandoning the Microsoft OS completely, at least not yet.

My 12" just served me well for 6+ weeks. I've arrived home to find that my 17" Studio Display now looks like a 46" Cinema X 2 Display. What a difference! The 12" is a very good machine, especially for portability. Don't expect tower performance and run Remote Desktop in place of Virtual PC. VPC is just too slow to be functional on this machine whereas Remote Desktop is almost instantly responsive on broadband.

I would wait until at least next month if you can, a 15" model would probably have all the features of the 17" at a price closer to the 12". Note: There is no DVI output on the , no Gigabit ethernet, and no FW2 on the 12".

 

[Mark Hamilton]

Are revisions expected soon?

 

[Michael*K]

I'd expect a revised 15-inch model within a month, hopefully sooner. I've been using a 1 GHz Ti PB at the office and it is one excellent machine. But its design is a little long in the tooth when compared to the 12 and 17-inch models.