T42 vs new G4 ibook

[ddutta]

Has anyone compared the performance of a 1.6G T42 vs the newly released Apple G4 iBook with 1.33G proc?

[tehsoul]

how can you compare performance? it's x86 vs ppc, with different operating systems

[ddutta]

using common apps. eg firefox, photoshop, matlab etc

[nrj45]

If somebody run such tests, he has to do this under linux (for the tp). Since MAC OS X has a linux core.

[kaiser]

If somebody run such tests, he has to do this under linux (for the tp). Since MAC OS X has a linux core.

Apple states somehow other specs:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/unix/

OS X uses a Mach Kernel and BSD Userland. Nothing about Linux.

[desdinova]

I've owned a bunch of macs, including a last-gen iBook (1.2GHz).

They're fine machines and probably mostly comparable to the P-Ms.
I would say the P-Ms would win in CPU-heavy stuff though. Video encoding, 3d rendering, audio tracking, VSTs, what have you.

The G4 is powerful per clock, but it doesn't perform miracles. The system bus is still 133 and I'm told that even if it were faster, the CPU wouldn't be able to keep up with it as-is.

Firefox, I doubt you'll notice a difference.
Photoshop is heavily, I'm told, optimised for Altivec, so the difference is probably negligable.
Matlab, no clue.

You don't really buy an ibook because it's a speed demon, you buy an ibook because it's well made, gets good battlife (I got 6hours with mine) and it runs OSX well.
OSX is a dream to use, and many linux/x11 programs have been ported to it.

The best solution would be to find your local Apple store and just spend an hour playing with one, they have all kinds of apps installed on the machines in-store.

Good luck.

[Steve007]

Has anyone compared the performance of a 1.6G T42 vs the newly released Apple G4 iBook with 1.33G proc?

No. What's the point?

[ddutta]

The precise point is this: for linux lovers, T42 can be a pain .... esp to get everything like suspend, ACPI etc working. At every step you need to put in decent amounts of effort. After doing all this, you may still have to run MSOffice. Of course there is Open Office which is great but you need to read MSOffice documents that look different in OO. Hence you need a OS with the robustness of Linux and open source and still be able to use some commercial software.

On the other hand, the T42 is such a fine piece of engineering that you dont want anything else So what do you do? If only apple sold its OSX for the 86 platform. Then you could buy a coool T42/43 and use OSX. Its unfortunate that IBM touts itself as linux friendly but cant make its laptops 100% linux friendly ... ready to go .

Isnt the above reason good enough?

[emorphien]

The Pentium M will clobber it in single application performance the majority of the time. Clock for clock the performance is very close, and with the P-M clocking higher its not much of a contest.

[tehsoul]

The precise point is this: for linux lovers, T42 can be a pain .... esp to get everything like suspend, ACPI etc working. At every step you need to put in decent amounts of effort. After doing all this, you may still have to run MSOffice. Of course there is Open Office which is great but you need to read MSOffice documents that look different in OO. Hence you need a OS with the robustness of Linux and open source and still be able to use some commercial software.

On the other hand, the T42 is such a fine piece of engineering that you dont want anything else So what do you do? If only apple sold its OSX for the 86 platform. Then you could buy a coool T42/43 and use OSX. Its unfortunate that IBM touts itself as linux friendly but cant make its laptops 100% linux friendly ... ready to go .

Isnt the above reason good enough?

first of all, there's loads on information on running linux on thinkpads, and with decent linux knowledge, it's easy to get everything up and running. hell, if you don't know how to troubleshoot something like acpi (in this case, just googling and reading up on the issue), you better stay away from linux anyway.

if you like osx, get an ibook/powerbook... it's not like apple's laptop design is as horrible as dell's. hell, i'll probably even get an apple x86 12" ibook once they're released!

[nirvana0001]

install both systems on T42
I am sure the new X86 system can work on PC platform

[desdinova]

install both systems on T42
I am sure the new X86 system can work on PC platform

It kind of runs like [censored], and you need an SSE3 enabled cpu to use Rosetta. Without Rosetta you're limited to osx/x86 apps only, no PPC emulation.

So, you'd have a buggy, unsupported OS with no apps! Sounds good to me!

[beerak]

The precise point is this: for linux lovers, T42 can be a pain .... esp to get everything like suspend, ACPI etc working. At every step you need to put in decent amounts of effort. After doing all this, you may still have to run MSOffice. Of course there is Open Office which is great but you need to read MSOffice documents that look different in OO. Hence you need a OS with the robustness of Linux and open source and still be able to use some commercial software.

On the other hand, the T42 is such a fine piece of engineering that you dont want anything else So what do you do? If only apple sold its OSX for the 86 platform. Then you could buy a coool T42/43 and use OSX. Its unfortunate that IBM touts itself as linux friendly but cant make its laptops 100% linux friendly ... ready to go .

Isnt the above reason good enough?

first of all, there's loads on information on running linux on thinkpads, and with decent linux knowledge, it's easy to get everything up and running. hell, if you don't know how to troubleshoot something like acpi (in this case, just googling and reading up on the issue), you better stay away from linux anyway.

if you like osx, get an ibook/powerbook... it's not like apple's laptop design is as horrible as dell's. hell, i'll probably even get an apple x86 12" ibook once they're released!

I agree if you don't know how to handle Linux problems on Txx then it does not mean it is not possible to solve ... Windows is quite cool system because every manufacturer has drivers but anyway Linux in the qualified hands is powerful tool without limits.

[nirvana0001]

install both systems on T42
I am sure the new X86 system can work on PC platform

It kind of runs like [censored], and you need an SSE3 enabled cpu to use Rosetta. Without Rosetta you're limited to osx/x86 apps only, no PPC emulation.

So, you'd have a buggy, unsupported OS with no apps! Sounds good to me!

http://www.pconline.com.cn/notebook/ski ... 928_2.html

[desdinova]

http://www.pconline.com.cn/notebook/ski ... 928_2.html

I didn't say you can't do it, I just think it's pointless to. I've done it in vmware and native.

Even if you just want to play with it, you really should do it on an SSE3 enabled CPU. Which, if I'm not mistaken, isn't *any* Pentium-M. With the SSE3 machine, you'll be able to actually download and use apps. Without, you're stuck with iLife and xcode... whee!

If you've got an new(ish) A64 or a new(ish) PIV, by all means, rock out.

But if you want to *use* OSX, buy a mac.

[nirvana0001]

I didn't say you can't do it, I just think it's pointless to. I've done it in vmware and native.

Even if you just want to play with it, you really should do it on an SSE3 enabled CPU. Which, if I'm not mistaken, isn't *any* Pentium-M. With the SSE3 machine, you'll be able to actually download and use apps. Without, you're stuck with iLife and xcode... whee!

If you've got an new(ish) A64 or a new(ish) PIV, by all means, rock out.

But if you want to *use* OSX, buy a mac.

But how come they installed a lot apps on that computer?

[desdinova]

But how come they installed a lot apps on that computer?

Do you mean the apps in the dock?

Those all come with osx.
From left to right: Finder, Dashboard, Mail, Safari, iChat, Address book, iTunes, iPhoto, iCal, quicktime, control panel, a url, trash.

Nothing particularly useful.

[beerak]

Just take a look on the applications you want to use, if there is some important app depending on the OS you need to use then choose that one. If you're windows or OSX developer there is no choice. If not, then it doesn't matter

[nirvana0001]

not the apps in the dock. they installed some extra softwares.

[tom2517]

using common apps. eg firefox, photoshop, matlab etc

I don't have the 1.6 thinkpad or the ibook. But I do have the 2.13 T43 and 1.5 17 inch powerbook. While there isn't much difference in word processing or firefox. the T43 is much faster processing my raw files in photoshop and converting it to jpeg.

Obviously my T43 has a faster processor but I want to note that G4 runs very very hot. In fact, it crashed very often when processing my raw files because it ran too hot. With my T43, I can let it run overnight and never worry it will crash due to heat.