MacBook Pro questions

[Thank The Cheese]

My iBook G3 is dying fast it had a good run, ~5 years without a problem, and boy have I put it thorough its paces (Premiere, Photoshop, After Effects, to name a few). I'd like to fix it, because it's still a great machine, but even if I could magically repair it now, I've been thinking for over a year that it is just not powerful enough anymore.

Good news is, it gives me a great excuse to by a MacBook Pro! Now, it's not going to happen tomorrow, obviously, though if someone woul dlike to spot me the money that'd be great I'd just like to know what machine I should be saving for. So I have 3 questions:


1.

According to The AU Applestore, the 1.83Ghz is $3,200, and the 2Ghz is $4,000.

Big difference in price! :O

The major difference is the processor (1.8 vs 2) and graphics (128MB vs 256MB). But is it worth the extra money?


2.

Pretend for a second all Pro apps are universal and Rosetta is no longer needed. How does a MacBook pro compare to a PowerMac G5 Dual Core?


3. I recall there was a bit of contraversey about the fact Steve never said anything about battery life when he announced the MacBook Pro. Now that people have used them -- what is the verdict with that? I presume no news is good news, and it turned out to be OK.


Thanks for the help

[Mikuro]

I'd go for the low-end. It's an awfully big price difference, if you ask me. I guess it's justified for people who need to attach second monitors and stuff, but unless you have such a specific need for a super-duper-great video card, I don't think it'll make much difference. Both cards support all of Tiger's bells and whistles (i.e., Core Image).

On the other hand, Apple does say you need a 2.0GHz Core Duo to play 1080p HD H.264 video in QuickTime 7 (1.8GHz is sufficient for 720p) in their system requirements, so if you're big on video, it might be worth it.

Steve Jobs said the chip was about as fast as a G5, core for core, Hz for Hz. From what I've heard it's pretty close, at least. I imagine a Power Mac G5 would outperform the MacBook for many tasks, because the frontside bus and some other parts are faster in the Power Mac, and the G5s run at higher clock speeds. So even if you trust Apple's numbers, which would naturally be skewed in favor of the Core Duo, it looks like the Power Mac G5 would be a bit faster. (Which is probably part of the reason there's no new Power Mac yet!)

I'm still wondering about the battery life issue, myself. Considering how big a deal they made about the power consumption of these chips, it darn well better be good.....

[Lt Major Burns]

what i've heard is that battery life is similar to the old 15" powerbooks, about 4-5 hours, and that the new architecture of the design means that it can get very hot too.

[mdnky]

A friend of mine bought one, he likes it so far. We've compared it to my 15"HD PowerBook and he's getting about 4 hours per charge on light usage (web, Keynote [taking notes on presentations], email, etc.), screen set somewhere in the 1/3 to 1/2 brightness area, bluetooth off. With the same settings, I see about 5 hours usually.

One thing we did notice is that it's much easier to drain the battery on the MacBook when using processor intensive apps like iMovie and LightRoom (Adobe's beta "Aperture"-like app). Using those, the PowerBook lasts at least twice as long than the MacBook does. Then again it (MacBook) is a bit faster at doing things, so there is a slight offset in the 'work done' to 'power used' ratio. The PowerBook still slightly edges it out though.

It definitely runs hotter than mine...can be a real pain if you use it as a "laptop" and do anything that kicks the processors into action for a bit. If you run SETI@HOME, it really heats up. Speedwise it handily beats mine: The MacBook's average time per work unit is around 9000 seconds (2.5 hours), the PowerBook's is around 18,000 (5 hours). Not surprising since the measured speeds (Floating Point, Interger) from the BOINC program say the MacBook is pretty much twice the PowerBook in both areas.

The Quad G5 does most SETI work units in 30 minutes, the regular dual cores in about 1 to 1.5 hours. As already said, the MacBook was doing it in 2.5 hours. Not a great indicator, unless you're doing similar scientific analysis type things.

OWC has some benchmarks which might help you. The links below compare the 15" HD PowerBook (1.67GHz) vs. 15" MacBook Pro (2.0GHz) vs. PowerMac DC (2.0GHz) vs. PowerMac Quad (2.5GHz). Their system forces you to include an upgrade card test, so the a 7447a G4 upgrade (2.0GHz) is in there too.

• Boot into OS X, XBench 1.1.3, AltiVec Fractal, CineBench, QT 6 500MB DV to MPEG4 Export
• Time to open/close 1000 finder windows, 21 step Photoshop CS routine, Time to Rip Audio CD, CPU Load Testing (iTunes, Photoshop CS), Call of Duty

[Thank The Cheese]

thanks so much for the replies everyone. I've been saving like a mofo, working round the clock these last couple weeks to get some extra money too. never realised how much I relied on my iBook until it's gone, so I need a new laptop.

Until boot camp hit the scene, I was set on the 3,200 model, but now I"m not so sure. The only thing I use my PC for these days is 3D studio Max. Obviously a better graphics card would help me out with that. I presume it will significantly help Adobe CS apps too, which I use a lot too.

I guess what I want to know is: one has a 128MB card, the other a 256MB card. does this mean it is literally twice as good, or do graphics cards not work that way?

Appreciate the links mdnky. Interesting that most of the tests indicate that the PowerBook G4 outperforms the MacBook?! Some of the tasks would be slow because the MacBook has to run the app under rosetta, but even things like opening 1000 finder windows and exporting video is significantly slower on the MacBook. How can this be?