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Senior Member
Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: Dallas
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I bought a PowerBook 12 in April of 2004. It was a leap as I had only used Mac's at the store and some at school back in the day. It's totally stock and was ~$1900. I have never been so dissapointed in a computer in my life. I was assured, talking to people on forums and in person, that the thing was equivelent to the same priced laptops from Sony, etc... I knew going in that the screen was of lesser quality, but I liked the size. I also liked the OS, the over all looks and the awesome fit and finish. Fast forward to the present, and I never use it. It's just too slow, and un-responsive. I follow the forums, and when I see an update has been posted I power it up and download it, use it for a few days, then put it back to sleep because I get frustrated at the lack of speed. I don't game, I surf the web, write sites, e-mail, edit photos and videos, etc... The iMac 'mini's' specs are not good enough to appeal to even the most basic PC user. At least, none that I have ever known. Give it at least a 1.5 G4, with a minimum of 512mb of RAM, and a modern (minimum 64mb, but 128mb would be better) video card. Then I'd but one in a heart beat. Though, I guess, if it comes in at ~$500 the TS listed specs won't be so bad. But the one I listed should be had for ~$700 for those who wan't a cheap Mac, but still want some real power, don't want an attached monitor, and can't afford a G5. Last edited by CitizenTony : 2004-12-30 at 04:38. |
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Member
Join Date: Jul 2004
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Me, I've been nothing but absolutely pleased with my Powerbook 1.25GHz. I bought it to do dual purpose until I can afford another desktop. I do some photo editing in GIMP, video editing with Final Cut Express, CD burning for my daughters from downloads from iTunes, Home video burning with iDVD, surf the web, Office(Word, Excel) for work, dabble in File Maker Pro, very occasional gaming(Rivan, etc.) And now Santa been good to me. I got a LaCie 200GB Firewire 800/400 external harddrive w/ 16MB buffer. Should really help make home videos a breese now, without stressing my laptop harddrive. Just thought I needed to provide an alternate view. cheers.  Just waiting to be included in one of Apple's target markets. |
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I shot the sherrif.
Join Date: May 2004
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yeah yeah, shouldn't feed them and all, but...
CitizenTony, sell it on ebay if it's doing nothing. you'll make at least 80% of the money back. better than having it sitting on a shelf gathering dust. Google is your frenemy. Caveat Emptor - Latin for tough titty I tend to interpret things in the way that's most hilarious to me |
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Senior Member
Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: Dallas
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Mine's the 867Mhz. I've played with the G5 and like them a lot better and they will suit my needs, but I only need a lap top so I'm out until they bring them over. For the guy calling me a troll, I'm not. Just don't post to MB's that much. I had some posts when the think secret board was on it's own, but just got around to re-regestering. I own a mac and plan to buy a G5 once in laptop form. But, thanks for actually reading my original post and seeing I was just offering a non-argumentive opinion/experience.  |
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Senior Member
Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: Dallas
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I bought a PB 12 a few month's after they were released. People in real life and on Mac forums said it was as fast as everything on the PC side, so I got it. I'm dissapointed with the speed. Everything else I love. The fit and finish, OS X, etc, etc... Compared with my PC, it's really slow and I get frustrated using it, so I don't much. I do take it on vacation, and the like, and like it way too much to sell it. The only reason I said anything was to back up what someone else said about some switchers. Most would be dissapointed with the power of the iMac 'mini'. At least, everyone I know. I suggested they add more power and raise the price a tad for a upper level, headless, iMac 'mini', then I'd buy one. Regardless, thanks for showing someone can have a first post here that states a true opinion/experience (that was glowing in all other aspects) and not catch any flak.  Real cool...Last edited by CitizenTony : 2004-12-30 at 23:43. |
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I shot the sherrif.
Join Date: May 2004
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Google is your frenemy. Caveat Emptor - Latin for tough titty I tend to interpret things in the way that's most hilarious to me |
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Senior Member
Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: Dallas
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Quote:
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 To go back on topic, here's to hopeing the iMac 'mini' actually comes out and is a success enough for them to release a more powerful model later. |
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Member
Join Date: Dec 2004
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I have an 800Mhz G4 iMac (768Mb ram) that I use for web, music, iMovie, and occasional SimCity or AOE. One thing that I have noticed using friends/work PCs is how "sluggish" they feel. From accessing the start menu to opening applications, they just feel slow. None of them have the highest spec Alienware machines out there, but going by specs alone, they should run circles around my iMac. Maybe the computers ran faster before they thought about getting on the internet and caught a ton of spy/mal/adware. But for whatever reason, they are just sloths. Have you tried putting more RAM in? I never even used mine with the original 256Mb. I noticed at the Apple store most of their display models have a little extra under the hood. Maybe that would help. |
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Senior Member
Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: Dallas
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I have heard more ram helps a lot, I just heven't tried it yet. Maybe my problem is the perceived speed? The mouse curser moves slower on the mac, and some stuff like that. After paying more attention to it yesterday and today, I think that may be what bothers me, not the actual speed, just the way the OS works compared to Linux and Windows. Sorry for more off topic. |
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Mr. Vieira
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Tennessee
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My friend, upon getting her iBook last year, was complaining about the same thing. When I went to see her and tried it myself, it instantly dawned on me what the deal was. I showed her, we slid it to the fastest setting and she was happy again. We had a good chuckle. Is there any chance that's at play here? And yes, the RAM. Go to 512MB, at least. More if you can swing it (768MB, etc.). If, of course, the mouse/trackpad thing IS set to the default (slow tracking) speed AND you're trying to use this thing with 128MB RAM or so...you're in line for a smack, I'm just letting you know.   |
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Senior Member
Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: Dallas
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No, no, it's bumped to max, and the ram is stock 256. I'll look into maxing it out next weekend.
Side bar: I installed Yellow Dog Linux 3.1 a few month's ago, and the mouse ran at the speeds I like. I think it's just the way OS X handles the mouse. (Have since removed Yellow Dog, as it has no support for things like sleep, AE, ...) |
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Selfish Heathen
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Zone of Pain
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For faster cursor tracking, try the free Mouse Zoom. It can make your mouse go at ungodly speeds.
 Regarding the RAM, yeah, that'll definitely slow you down if you do any sort of multitasking because the system will thrash the hard drive (magnitudes slower) for virtual memory. The quality of this board depends on the quality of the posts. The only way to guarantee thoughtful, informative discussion is to write thoughtful, informative posts. AppleNova is not a real-time chat forum. You have time to compose messages and edit them before and after posting. |
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Mr. Vieira
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Tennessee
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CitizenTony, I think if you could swing dropping a 512MB DIMM in there (for a 768MB total), you'd notice a world of difference, no question. Apple says "128MB for OS X" (last I checked), but then you open up more than, say, Mail, Safari and iTunes, you're going to be hitting that ceiling pretty soon, as Brad says.
That mouse thing Brad mentions...I downloaded either that OR something similar a year or so ago, after reading about it. It was completely ridiculous. If you just LOOKED at your mouse, the cursor jumped about four feet off your screen! If you simply TOUCHED your mouse with a finger, it jumped to the next county. |
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Member
Join Date: Nov 2004
Location: Recife, Brazil
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As for the powerbook talk... dude, max out your Ram. a 867MHz Powerbook isn't a slow computer by any means, and especially not when it was released. I work on a G4 400 and I'm an Art Director, I work with Photoshop and Illustrator CS (Illustrator CS actually manages to be a whole lot heavier than Photoshop CS) every day! And lemme tell you, now that is a slow computer. The senior Art Director works on a powerbook with the same specs as yours, and he doesn't have any problems. and this isn't coming from the point of view of someone who has a G4 400 (as I work on a G4 400, but I also own a G5 Dual 2.0GHz with 2.5Gigs of RAM!!!)
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Veteran Member
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Detroit City is the place to be...maddog town gonna set you free
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I have to say, I have a G3 600 iBook. And if all your doing is surfing the internet, your G4 should be way more than enough!! I really don't do much more than that with this box, and it rocks!! I have the maxed out 640 megs of ram, because, why wouldn't you??!!
Possibly you need to try a different browser?? I know many people who love Safari, but I'm not one of them. Try Firefox or Camino.... I wish I had a powerbook G4, I know I could do a lot more than I can now, but this little G3 kicks ass!! //don't think your a troll! Different Strokes, for Different Folks. And So On and So On, and Skoobie Doobie Doobie. |
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Microbial member
Join Date: May 2004
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Frankly, you don't even have to max out your RAM. Even adding 256MB should make a noticeable difference, particularly if you're running several applications.
Are you having problems with Office being slow? 2004 seems to be much less of a dog than X (not that I use either). |
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Senior Member
Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: Dallas
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I do much more with it than just surf the web, or, I'd like to.
Will adding more ram really make that much difference? In multi-task/compiling, UI, and the like? If so, I'll pick up some in the next week. I already use Firefox, but the rest of the day to day stuff is handled in Mail, iCal, iTunes, etc... I do have Office X on it and yes, it is really unresponsive. More so than everything else. I don't use it much so I'm going to wait until after the coming releases to see what Apple does regarding spreadsheets and .doc's. If nothing comes of it, I'll upgrade to 2004. -If I upgrade the ram and it makes as much difference as I am hearing, I'm going to kick myself for not having done it sooner, but why does Apple ship with so little ram if it hinders the OS so much? Thanks for the suggestions. |
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Microbial member
Join Date: May 2004
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How much do you have? The stock 256?
If so, yes, you will see a very noticeable boost. 256 is the minimum for OS X not to grind to a screeching halt. You'll notice incremental improvement all the way up to 2GB of memory, but the big difference is between 256 and 512. Apple ships with so little RAM to maintain its vaunted margins, and to allow third-party resellers to maintain a competitive advantage over Apple through offering "deals" on included RAM. It's one of the few ways they can distinguish themselves for the enormous hulking giants represented by the online and brick-and-mortar Apple Stores. |
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Fro Productions(tm)
Join Date: May 2004
Location: London Town
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Is your computer clear of haxies and crap that might be slowing it down? I have a 1.25GHz PB 5400 RPM 1GB and Adobe CS, MS Office 2004 (R.I.P. ), etc etc are all really quite fast.bouncy bouncy |
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I shot the sherrif.
Join Date: May 2004
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also, if you notice that Office seems slow, turn off the "feedback with sound" and "feedback with animation" options. for some reason, that really slows stuff down.
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Veteran Member
Join Date: May 2004
Location: NY
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And yeah, Brad's right about the VM issue if you only have 256. Just opening one of the Office apps should get you close to the point where you'll start swapping. An extra 256 will definitely help alleviate that, though I think 768 total is a more comfortable amount. |
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Selfish Heathen
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Zone of Pain
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The next time your system feels like it's getting slow and bogged down, fire up Terminal (/Applications/Utilities) and enter the command "top". Pay close attention to the values at the top labeled "free" and "pageouts". Note: don't get scared if you see giant VM sizes for some apps. They're perfectly normal and aren't actually mapped out, using up your scant supply of memory. Also, CPU% will add up to 200 on dual-processor machines.  How much physical memory do you have free during heavy use? I'm guessing around 10MB. You should actually consider that to be zero. Regardless of how much RAM and VM is in use, the system will always keep around 10 MB free for emergency use by lower-level kernel functions. How many pageouts has your system used? The number outside the parenthesis is cumulative since boot; the number inside is the number currently being accessed. The larger these numbers are, the more your system is having to hit the hard drive to pull from virtual memory. Bigger = bad and slow. Office v.X really is a stubborn hog. It's very poorly written (surprise, surprise!), inefficient, and downright slow at times. Turn off the live grammar checker, as MCQ mentioned. That's more the problem than the live spelling checker. Also, kill the feedback options as alcimedes said. I haven't tried Office 2004 and don't know if it's markedly better. I personally use TextEdit for the vast majority of my quick and dirty document writing. When I need more formatting options, I fire up Nisus Writer Express. The only times I use MS Word nowadays are for stubborn files that Nisus won't import correctly and for verifying that exported .doc files from Nisus appear correctly. Of course, I'm just a lowly university student. I understand that "cubicle life" for some folks can be much less flexible and forgiving. Quote:
It does the same for in-store Apple sales. If you actually discuss your purchase with a salesperson, he'll surely recommend upgrading the RAM. This is the same tactic employed my practically every other consumer electronics retail store on the planet. Mark the base unit up for sale, but throw in lots of extras before you get to the register! On a side note, I should mention that, like Office in some ways, Firefox is not exact a model citizen Mac OS X application and, next to better apps like Safari and Omniweb, can really feel like a half-hearted port. Yes, it's very speedy in the rendering department and the extensions are nice; I won't refute that. However, the user general experience is quite lacking. Practically none of the UI is truly native. Everything from text fields to the toolbar to contextual menus to tooltips has an unusual feel with very nonstandard (on a Mac) behaviors. If this kind of stuff doesn't matter, then I'd ask why bother with a Mac when you'll get that identical experience on a Windows or Linux box? Just my two cents. The quality of this board depends on the quality of the posts. The only way to guarantee thoughtful, informative discussion is to write thoughtful, informative posts. AppleNova is not a real-time chat forum. You have time to compose messages and edit them before and after posting. |
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Fro Productions(tm)
Join Date: May 2004
Location: London Town
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If you do not like the terminal, much of the above info can be found via the GUI in applications>utilities>activity monitor: system memory
 bouncy bouncy |
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ಠ_ರೃ
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Minnesota
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FYI, the original 867 MHz 12" PowerBook only has 128 MB built in. The other 128 MB is in a SODIMM. So you should definitely get a 512 MB SODIMM to add to that, for a total of 640 MB. That would be perfect. Replacing the 128 MB with a 256 MB would help, but it wouldn't help a lot. Best just to spend a little extra for more RAM.
You just have to keep that in mind with Macs. Apple NEVER ships their computers with enough RAM. The only time they ever supply enough is immediately after they bump up the amount they provide, and then it's only good for one revision. So when they started including 512 MB on the high-end desktops, it was enough, but nowadays 512 MB is the least you want on a basic system and anyone who cares a lot about performance should have 768 MB to 1.5 GB. |
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Senior Member
Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: Dallas
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Hmm... Looks like I could really use more ram...
  At the time of this screen shot, the computer had been sitting idle for a few minutes with only Safari and Terminal running. Current uptime is right at 13 days and it looks like the pagefile has been hit quite a bit. |
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Fro Productions(tm)
Join Date: May 2004
Location: London Town
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Microbial member
Join Date: May 2004
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Heh, here are my pageouts (17 days up)
386881(0) pageins, 270632(0) pageouts That's with 1280MB of memory. The difference probably is that I've compiled several large projects and done some video transcoding during that period. I've managed over a million pageouts in a day on an iBook with 256MB of memory (heavy normal use, strangely — I was running about 6 applications most of that day, finishing a chapter). My memory usage figures are: PhysMem: 128M wired, 509M active, 623M inactive, 1.23G used, 18.3M free which looks bad until you note the very large amount which is inactive. |
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Senior Member
Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: Dallas
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In the context of my original post, I really meant no harm and was only expressing how I, a "switcher", felt about my Mac; Offering my opinion of what the iMac 'mini' might should be like if it is truly meant to bring more people over to the Mac experience.  |
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Senior Member
Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: Dallas
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Senior Member
Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: Texas
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Tony,
Never mind the people who are egging you on. I think you are completely correct about the RAM issue you are having. I say up the RAM and you should see a significant boost in speed. I DON'T yet have a Mac, but will get one soon, and as a long-time PC builder / entusiast I know that these days 6MB free of RAM is a very tell-tale sign that you do not have enough RAM. So I say add some if you feel like making the situation better on your Powerbook (and I think you are still up to it, but I could be wrong). Anyone else concur? --EDIT-- Oh yeah, I live in Frisco. Cheers, Wraven |
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