Panther + iBook = ....
...a pretty nice update.
iBook 800/12/30/640
After having it for only one night, here are my impressions.
Speed/Performance/Snappiness
Increased, if only slightly. Nothing major here, but it is definitely a step in the right direction. Menus are very responsive but I do not see much difference by way of scrolling long documents. I do not do a lot of resizing but it seems to be fine. Speed is a nice enhancement, but don't buy it for the big speed boost. You will be disappointed if your expectations are too high.
Compatibility
There is already a thread about programs that are orphaned by Panther. I lost the use of a utility called Mighty Mouse that allowed me a lot of flexibility over my mouse pointer, particularly the size. I would love to replace that If anyone can direct me to something else.
Features
Expose' and FUS are the two most visible new features. They both run very well on this machine. No complaints about performance. In fact, they are implemented extremely well. FUS does not extract a heavy price as I had first expected it would. It uses very little real memory. It does use a lot a virtual memory. This is very smart because other accounts are just sitting there idol so the HD is not actually paging. RAM is freed up and the system does not come grinding to a stop just because three people are logged on with tons of open programs. Still, there needs to be more programs that can have multiple sessions for this to really be useful. For instance, if one user has iTunes open, no other user can open iTunes when they log on. The same is true for all of the iApps, Word, and other important programs. Finder and Safari, however can be opened by as many people that are logged on without limitations.
Improvements
I have seen a lot of complaining about this, but I put the new look of the fonts in the plus column. Everything looks so much more sharp. Fonts are easier to read at all resolutions. The most improvement in appearance may be in my CRT that I have hooked up to it. There even seems to be better contrast but that is probably just my imagination.
I love the instant searching in the Finder. I also consider the sidebar to be a nice touch, especially in the open and save dialogs. The new Activity Monitor is also nice because it helps you pinpoint exactly where performance drains are coming from.
Issues
There seems to be a strange problem with VPC not being able to save disk images consistently.
The Text to Speech engine seems to be worse. This is bad news for me because I use it quite a bit for proofreading long documents. (I do a lot of writing). The voice seems more clipped and choppy. If anyone knows of other TtS programs for the Mac, I would greatly appreciate it. Perhaps someone could tell me how to use the old TtS engine.
if anyone out there is sitting on the fence with a similar configuration as mine, I will be more than happy to try and run tests or answer your questions. No gaming questions please. I don't play anything more demanding than chess and Snood. I will stop in from time to time with more observations if anyone is interested. If there is already a Panther/iBook thread that I missed, perhaps a mod can place this post in the appropriate place.
iBook 800/12/30/640
After having it for only one night, here are my impressions.
Speed/Performance/Snappiness
Increased, if only slightly. Nothing major here, but it is definitely a step in the right direction. Menus are very responsive but I do not see much difference by way of scrolling long documents. I do not do a lot of resizing but it seems to be fine. Speed is a nice enhancement, but don't buy it for the big speed boost. You will be disappointed if your expectations are too high.
Compatibility
There is already a thread about programs that are orphaned by Panther. I lost the use of a utility called Mighty Mouse that allowed me a lot of flexibility over my mouse pointer, particularly the size. I would love to replace that If anyone can direct me to something else.
Features
Expose' and FUS are the two most visible new features. They both run very well on this machine. No complaints about performance. In fact, they are implemented extremely well. FUS does not extract a heavy price as I had first expected it would. It uses very little real memory. It does use a lot a virtual memory. This is very smart because other accounts are just sitting there idol so the HD is not actually paging. RAM is freed up and the system does not come grinding to a stop just because three people are logged on with tons of open programs. Still, there needs to be more programs that can have multiple sessions for this to really be useful. For instance, if one user has iTunes open, no other user can open iTunes when they log on. The same is true for all of the iApps, Word, and other important programs. Finder and Safari, however can be opened by as many people that are logged on without limitations.
Improvements
I have seen a lot of complaining about this, but I put the new look of the fonts in the plus column. Everything looks so much more sharp. Fonts are easier to read at all resolutions. The most improvement in appearance may be in my CRT that I have hooked up to it. There even seems to be better contrast but that is probably just my imagination.
I love the instant searching in the Finder. I also consider the sidebar to be a nice touch, especially in the open and save dialogs. The new Activity Monitor is also nice because it helps you pinpoint exactly where performance drains are coming from.
Issues
There seems to be a strange problem with VPC not being able to save disk images consistently.
The Text to Speech engine seems to be worse. This is bad news for me because I use it quite a bit for proofreading long documents. (I do a lot of writing). The voice seems more clipped and choppy. If anyone knows of other TtS programs for the Mac, I would greatly appreciate it. Perhaps someone could tell me how to use the old TtS engine.
if anyone out there is sitting on the fence with a similar configuration as mine, I will be more than happy to try and run tests or answer your questions. No gaming questions please. I don't play anything more demanding than chess and Snood. I will stop in from time to time with more observations if anyone is interested. If there is already a Panther/iBook thread that I missed, perhaps a mod can place this post in the appropriate place.