SDNick484
2005-02-15, 14:12
I am considering trying out my first Mac since my Apple IIsi, and I could use some advice. My Thinkpad T21's motherboard recently died and I am now debating between going Big Blue again or perhaps giving Apple a shot (in particular the new PowerBook 15" w/ 1.5GHz G4 521MB RAM). If I do stay on the PC side, I will likely go with the IBM Thinkpad T43 (15" 4.9lbs, P-M 1.86 512MB RAM). The only OS on my T21 for the last year has been Linux, and so any experiences with dual booting OSX with Yellow Dog Linux would be appreciated.
I recently read the excellent article by Anand of anandtech.com on his recent adventures with the PowerBook, and I feel I'm in a similar situation. My primary concerns are the mouse (I will greatly miss the trackpoint, scroll wheel, and second mouse button) and software. The software I'm particularly worried about is PSPICE (a circuit simulator I'm sure most electrical engineers are familiar with); is there a Mac version available (preferably with a student price)? Also I noticed work on porting OpenOffice.org to the Mac isn't going as smoothly and I was wondering how well the standard word processing suite that comes with the PB integrates with OpenOffice (what my desktop PC uses) and MS Office?
Also how does the G4 fare against the Pentium M? I understand quite well the difference in architecture and know a straight comparison isn't fair. What is fair though is a practical comparison of how long it would take similar tasks to complete. I have been trying to find benchmarks on how long it takes iTunes (with error protection disabled) to encode a 5 minute arbitrary song (w/ a 1.5GHz G4 512MB RAM) . Another comparison I would love to see is how long it takes to compress an arbitrary 2 hour DVD to XVid (not counting time to rip, just transcode) say 1200Kbps with the audio passed through. I know how long it takes my PC to do such tasks so it'd allow me see the scale.
I visited my local Apple store but made the mistake of talking to a sales associate and not a "genius," after doing research I found half the stuff he told me was BS (as I suspected at the time). Also is there any good Apple newsgroups on USENET?
One last thing, I read the Apple wireless card is not supported under Linux yet (it uses the closed source Broadcom chipset), is this true? I have my old Orinoco Silver card, but that'd be a hassle to use every time I want to boot Linux.
I'll likely be making my decision in the next couple days, so thanks in advance for any help & suggestions.
I recently read the excellent article by Anand of anandtech.com on his recent adventures with the PowerBook, and I feel I'm in a similar situation. My primary concerns are the mouse (I will greatly miss the trackpoint, scroll wheel, and second mouse button) and software. The software I'm particularly worried about is PSPICE (a circuit simulator I'm sure most electrical engineers are familiar with); is there a Mac version available (preferably with a student price)? Also I noticed work on porting OpenOffice.org to the Mac isn't going as smoothly and I was wondering how well the standard word processing suite that comes with the PB integrates with OpenOffice (what my desktop PC uses) and MS Office?
Also how does the G4 fare against the Pentium M? I understand quite well the difference in architecture and know a straight comparison isn't fair. What is fair though is a practical comparison of how long it would take similar tasks to complete. I have been trying to find benchmarks on how long it takes iTunes (with error protection disabled) to encode a 5 minute arbitrary song (w/ a 1.5GHz G4 512MB RAM) . Another comparison I would love to see is how long it takes to compress an arbitrary 2 hour DVD to XVid (not counting time to rip, just transcode) say 1200Kbps with the audio passed through. I know how long it takes my PC to do such tasks so it'd allow me see the scale.
I visited my local Apple store but made the mistake of talking to a sales associate and not a "genius," after doing research I found half the stuff he told me was BS (as I suspected at the time). Also is there any good Apple newsgroups on USENET?
One last thing, I read the Apple wireless card is not supported under Linux yet (it uses the closed source Broadcom chipset), is this true? I have my old Orinoco Silver card, but that'd be a hassle to use every time I want to boot Linux.
I'll likely be making my decision in the next couple days, so thanks in advance for any help & suggestions.