A Centrino Laptop Or A Mac G4 Powerbook?

Astral Fridge Magnet · Tue Jul 06, 2004 5:09 pm

Hello,

Sorry that this is not really Pulsar related but I am on the verge of buying a laptop, so the age old question is what do I get?
I am thinking of 2 machines. An ASUS 1.8 Centrino and an Apple G4 powerbook 1.33. Both have advantages and disadvantages.
First the ASUS:
It is a 1.8 centrino, 60gb 7200 rpm drive, 15" 1024 MB Ram.

Points for: 600 euros cheaper than a powerbook, 7200rpm drive.
Points against: Plastic, not as cool looking.

Powermac: 1.33 ghz, 1gb ram, a 5400 HD, 15"

Points for: Power (maybe), reliability, good build (made of titanium and some other metal)
Points against: Expensive, 5400 rpm hard drive, some software is PC only.

So what would u do? Can you get by with a 5400 drive? I have Ableton for PC, so would I be able to change it for no cost for a mac version? Though I think for me the only thing really stopping me getting a Mac is the 5400 HD.

I'd be intersted in any feed back please

Thanks

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Astral Fridge Magnet on 2004-07-06 18:11 ]</font>

samplaire · Post by **samplaire** » Wed Jul 07, 2004 11:58 am

You have to know that the MHz are 'different' on Mac and PC. Or rather the usage of MHz's. If you have a Mac 1.33 it's like a 2.2GHz PC or even better.

How do you know it's 5400RPM? Hmm... I've seen a 667MHz G4 PowerBook and it was very flawless working. So I would buy the G4 without any question. Look at the other features not seen (to my knowledge) on PCs.

darkrezin · Post by **darkrezin** » Wed Jul 07, 2004 12:39 pm

Sorry, but I can't agree with this.. I can appreciate Macs and their good points, but to compare a 1.33Ghz Mac with a 2.2GHz PC is crazy IMHO.. I've seen 2 GHz PC's run well over 30 spectral gates in Logic.. do you really think a 1.33GHz Mac could do this?

borg · Post by **borg** » Wed Jul 07, 2004 1:25 pm

...and remember centrino cpu numbers aren't the same as 'normal' pc cpu count.
i'm definitely no expert, but heard that the centrino advantage is of little importance to audio processing.

external 7200 fw hd are relatively cheap nowadays. if you want the cool look, get one of those lacie d2 disks to go with the Ti.

maybe wait until Live4 hits the shelves and find out what mac users have to say about mac optimisation. beta testers definitely reported better results on OSX (but so do pc folks, although the jump is not as big). it's no altivec optimized update, if that would make any difference anyway (?).

i'm not sure what to get next when upgrade time (inevitably) will come. powerbooks do look sexy, but does that imply the best love making?

looks do matter though: your models both have 15" screens. for ableton live, your screen can't be big enough... you could have a real wide monitor for the laptop at the same cost of the mac. live runs great(better) on pc...
i guess i'd buy a pc (knowing what i know today) for ableton live/laptop use.

samplaire · Post by **samplaire** » Wed Jul 07, 2004 4:17 pm

On 2004-07-07 13:39, dArKr3zIn wrote:
I've seen 2 GHz PC's run well over 30 spectral gates in Logic.. do you really think a 1.33GHz Mac could do this?

Hard to discuss things I haven't seen. But once I made a comparison with my friend - him on a 1.6GHz Pentium and me on the Rotten One 800MHz. We could achieve the same number of true verbs (waves) in Cubase.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: samplaire on 2004-07-07 17:26 ]</font>

darkrezin · Post by **darkrezin** » Wed Jul 07, 2004 6:52 pm

On 2004-07-07 14:25, borg wrote:
...and remember centrino cpu numbers aren't the same as 'normal' pc cpu count.
i'm definitely no expert, but heard that the centrino advantage is of little importance to audio processing.

Actually I have a Pentium M (part of 'Centrino' - the other part is the Intel Wireless chipset) 1.7ghz and the performance is verrrry good. I haven't got round to doing a definitive test yet but it copes very well with Magma/Pulsar and lots of CPU-based plugins.. I'll try and report back with a figure (Spectral Gates or Trueverbs) some time soon.

powerbooks do look sexy, but does that imply the best love making?

hehe! Actually I must admit I checked out one of the newer Powerbooks recently (17" model) and was struck by its rather amazing design.. you can't argue with the build quality and features on offer (6-pin firewire is virtually unheard of on PC laptops, for example), and it's so slim and desirable, you could imagine leaving your wife for it. My only issue with the current Powerbooks is CPU speed.. if they had a G5 model on offer I'd probably kill to get hold of one.