[tobes]

I'm using a 1st-gen Albook 15", 1.25GHz / 1GB / 7200RPM 80GB. My work is 'power user' office apps - MS office, acrobat, filemaker etc. Virtual PC gets fired up most days for various reasons. I'm in front of it for 10 hours+ a day.

The speed is beginning to frustrate me, and I'm considering upgrading to the new 1.67GHz, since the prospect of waiting until October (or later) for a G5 is somewhat depressing. Does anyone have any experience of the speed difference on these two machines? Is it worth the upgrade?

TIA,

Tobes

[FFL]

I don't have direct experience, but I'm going to guess that it's not a huge difference, but definitely noticible. Whether it's worth the upgrade depends on several factors, not the least of which is your net cost, if you are going to sell your current AIbook.

And, this is Purchasing Advice... moving

[Koodari]

35% difference in processor speed, so it should be noticeable, if the bottleneck is the processor. Have you checked memory usage?
Of course, the obvious answer to speed trouble would be a G5 desktop to complement your PB. You aren't travelling 10+ hours a day, are you?
Whichever route you go, with that amount of use, you really should upgrade when the upgrade is substantial enough. Good tools are never a bad investment.

[tobes]

Thanks for the tips. Sadly I'm on the road every single day, so a desktop is clean out of the question. The business can afford the new machine, I just need to find out if it's worth the money - Macworld published some benchmarks, but they don't give a great indication of the day-to-day impact. If anyone's upgraded from one machine to the other, I'd love to hear what you think.

Cheers

Tobes

[FFL]

I'll agree with Koodari's memory factor theory. If you get the new model with 1.5 or 2 GB of RAM, you will most definitely get a significant speedup.

[tobes]

D'oh! I meant to say that I've currently got the slower 4200rpm HDD- does that change things?

Toby

[709]

You probably won't notice the bump from a 4200>5400 drive that much. Of course it'll be a bit speedier, but with the increased Mhz, GPU, RAM and such you'll probably just get an overall snappier feel. That said, most expect this iteration to be the last of the single G4 PBooks, so you'd be getting the most solid and kink-worked-out Apple laptop until either the G5/dual-core G4 PowerBook comes out...and you *never* buy a Rev.A product.

FWIW, I'm picking up a 17" this weekend as well.

[tobes]

Well, that's all I needed to know - order for fully loaded 15" just placed

I know I'll kick & scream when the G5 appears, but you're quite right about the Rev A problems. My Rev A Ti gave me electric shocks and had marks all over the screen from the keys. My Rev A Al has been in once for white spots on the screen, and needs to go back again before I can sell it. And the hinges creak like something from a Boris Karloff movie...

Thanks for your help.

Tobes

[BenRoethig]

I wouldn't hold your breath on a PowerBook G5 unless Apple decides on a DTR Powerbook. There is no way a desktop chip like the PPC970 is going to fit in a 1" space.

[Kurama]

do you think if apple roles out a G5 pb; that the exterior of the pb will change dramaticly?

[intlplby]

i've actually read in several places that a 4200rpm to a 5400rpm is a noticeable difference, but that a 5400rpm to 7400rpm is not that much of a difference and not really worth it from a cost, battery life and heat standpoint....

considering a 5400rpm drive of the same capacity is only like $20-30 more than a 4200rpm of the same capacity it's worth it