Top of the line Powerbook falls short...
After much deliberation over the course of many months, I'm going to take the leap into non-desktop computer-hood.
I just sold my Arstechnica "god box" clone (+23" CG) at a profit! I gave my hot-rodded Pismo (OS 9 only) to my mid-seventies-old next door neighbors. They've never owned a computer but I now have them comfortable surfing, attaching, sending and reading emails and doing very basic word processing and image manipulation. They were both good open minded students!
I'm not in the graphic arts, nor science and technology (sort of...) fields. A little Photoshop and Office to take care of my business dealings are important to me.
As far as these needs go, Mac OS X makes XP look rough. XP also requires vigilance from the hackers and multitude of virii out there. You just have to stay on top of the updates. Here again, Mac OS has it all over XP. Of course, if the Mac OS X user base could increase by 10% (or whatever...) we would start to see an increase in hack and virus problems for the Mac. Maybe. Arguably, OS X is the sweetist looking "ready made" GUI on the planet! I think so anyway.
The one big however: I do love FPS gaming. SP and MP. I blame my son and daughter for this "sickness". Because of the powerful desktop I've been living with, I've grown use to state of the art game graphics. I'll tell you guys, I do get a kick everytime I fire up Doom 3, SoF 2, UTk4 and even HaloCE at how sweet they look and play. Umm, played...
Anyway, I have no allegiance to either Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. Neither one has ever invited me over for dinner. If I were twenty years younger, I would throw myself headfirst into one of the Linux varieties. Now that I'm in my fifties, I no longer have the patience for that sort of "geek" pursuit. I want a system that just "works". I want a laptop that "approaches" a high end desktop. I need to make my move now.
Apple's top of the line Powerbook just does not cut the mustard. Especially at it's price. I'm not kidding you people when I state that I really went round and round in my head over this. My lady accused me of going nuts. She may have been a little right.
I'm going with the Overam 8700. It is a sweet piece of technology. The only drawback, it doesn't run OS X. Oh well. A year or two from now, if Apple can produce a comparably spec'ed Powerbook, I might consider going back to Apple. This is not a rant against Apple, I'm just sharing with you guys. The Overam runs XP at almost "instantaneous" speeds. The Powerbook runs OS X with, to me, a percetible "lag". It's still fast. Very fast. I'm sure Tiger will offer a slight speed boost also. Compared to the Overam w/XP, there's somethng sluggish about the Powerbook/X combo. I know, I'm nitpicking in the extreme. These are, afterall, extreme machines.
Overam Mirage 8700 $2,000.00
http://www.overam.com/custom-laptops...-custom-laptop
weight 8.6 lbs.
17" 1440x900 XGA (NO DEAD PIXELS!)
ATI-Radeon 9700Pro Mobility 256MB
8x AGP
Integrated high-res (300,000 pixels) digital video-camera (CMOS)
Pentium 4 3.07GHz w/Hyper Threading
800MHz FSB
60Gig 7200RPM HDD
1Gig PC3200 DDR400 RAM
Microsoft XP-Pro
Apple Powerbook $3,249.00
weight 6.9 lbs.
17" 1400x900 XGA (5 dead pixels?)
ATI-Radeon 9700Pro Mobility 128MB
4x AGP
G4 1.5GHz
167MHz(?) FSB
80Gig 5400RPM HDD
1Gig PC2700 DDR333 RAM
OS X.3
I just sold my Arstechnica "god box" clone (+23" CG) at a profit! I gave my hot-rodded Pismo (OS 9 only) to my mid-seventies-old next door neighbors. They've never owned a computer but I now have them comfortable surfing, attaching, sending and reading emails and doing very basic word processing and image manipulation. They were both good open minded students!
I'm not in the graphic arts, nor science and technology (sort of...) fields. A little Photoshop and Office to take care of my business dealings are important to me.
As far as these needs go, Mac OS X makes XP look rough. XP also requires vigilance from the hackers and multitude of virii out there. You just have to stay on top of the updates. Here again, Mac OS has it all over XP. Of course, if the Mac OS X user base could increase by 10% (or whatever...) we would start to see an increase in hack and virus problems for the Mac. Maybe. Arguably, OS X is the sweetist looking "ready made" GUI on the planet! I think so anyway.
The one big however: I do love FPS gaming. SP and MP. I blame my son and daughter for this "sickness". Because of the powerful desktop I've been living with, I've grown use to state of the art game graphics. I'll tell you guys, I do get a kick everytime I fire up Doom 3, SoF 2, UTk4 and even HaloCE at how sweet they look and play. Umm, played...
Anyway, I have no allegiance to either Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. Neither one has ever invited me over for dinner. If I were twenty years younger, I would throw myself headfirst into one of the Linux varieties. Now that I'm in my fifties, I no longer have the patience for that sort of "geek" pursuit. I want a system that just "works". I want a laptop that "approaches" a high end desktop. I need to make my move now.
Apple's top of the line Powerbook just does not cut the mustard. Especially at it's price. I'm not kidding you people when I state that I really went round and round in my head over this. My lady accused me of going nuts. She may have been a little right.
I'm going with the Overam 8700. It is a sweet piece of technology. The only drawback, it doesn't run OS X. Oh well. A year or two from now, if Apple can produce a comparably spec'ed Powerbook, I might consider going back to Apple. This is not a rant against Apple, I'm just sharing with you guys. The Overam runs XP at almost "instantaneous" speeds. The Powerbook runs OS X with, to me, a percetible "lag". It's still fast. Very fast. I'm sure Tiger will offer a slight speed boost also. Compared to the Overam w/XP, there's somethng sluggish about the Powerbook/X combo. I know, I'm nitpicking in the extreme. These are, afterall, extreme machines.
Overam Mirage 8700 $2,000.00
http://www.overam.com/custom-laptops...-custom-laptop
weight 8.6 lbs.
17" 1440x900 XGA (NO DEAD PIXELS!)
ATI-Radeon 9700Pro Mobility 256MB
8x AGP
Integrated high-res (300,000 pixels) digital video-camera (CMOS)
Pentium 4 3.07GHz w/Hyper Threading
800MHz FSB
60Gig 7200RPM HDD
1Gig PC3200 DDR400 RAM
Microsoft XP-Pro
Apple Powerbook $3,249.00
weight 6.9 lbs.
17" 1400x900 XGA (5 dead pixels?)
ATI-Radeon 9700Pro Mobility 128MB
4x AGP
G4 1.5GHz
167MHz(?) FSB
80Gig 5400RPM HDD
1Gig PC2700 DDR333 RAM
OS X.3
Comments
Originally posted by tonton
How much would the PC cost with 1.5 GB of RAM?
Well, I can't figure out how he got $2000, I got $2492 for the quoted spec (I'm assuming he got the 4x DVD-RW for parity with the PB).
In any case, with 2 GB configured, it's $2962, still under the PB price.
Your right, I priced both machines to be delivered to my door READY to rumble. I'm aware that especially in the case of the Powerbook, most folks are gonna shop for their own RAM to bring prices down. I could do the same for the Overam to drop price a bit.
Dave K., how are the numbers wrong? I'm all ears (eyes)...
Like I stated before guys, I think OS X is superior to XP in many regards. It's their laptop hardware I find lacking, especially for the money.
If the Powerbook spec'ed out like the Overam, I would buy a Powerbook. Even at Apple's premium price.
Dave k., nevermind...
So price-wise the two machines are closer. That's good. The performance difference for gaming (especially) still remains.
it's OK to concede that the PB is the best for the money, that's what I tell my clients and after shopping around they agree.
I just wish Apple would make a $700 laptop because that seems to be where my first-time computer users are looking, and they find it in Dell and Compaq.
slughead, yup, laptops are always going to be more expensive for a given price to performance ratio no matter the brand.
Originally posted by hardhead
shabbasuraj, does 8.6 lbs seem too heavy to you? It's a bit heavier than the Powerbook at 6.9 lbs. That's not really much difference.
slughead, yup, laptops are always going to be more expensive for a given price to performance ratio no matter the brand.
I just noticed that the 8.6 lbs is without battery. W/battery, I'd guess it's easily 9 lbs.
http://www.overam.com/pages/en/8700/8700.htm
Originally posted by MCQ
I just noticed that the 8.6 lbs is without battery. W/battery, I'd guess it's easily 9 lbs.
http://www.overam.com/pages/en/8700/8700.htm
classic.
don't you love disclosure of specifications.
Like I said before, I'm not slamming Powerbooks. They are beautiful machines.
As I stated in original post, I'm replacing "desktop" towers. So it's not going to get carried around very often. Well, the ocasional LAN party.
An extra 2 pounds for over twice the performance? Sounds good to me.
Apple used to have desktop replacement notebooks: The G3 towers were not much faster then the G3 series powerbooks. Then they decided to go for slim form notebooks and we've been power starved ever since.
Sometimes I think that Apple is intentionally trying to avoid the desktop replacement category to try and force people to buy both a portable, and a tower...
Originally posted by hardhead
Whu'chu mean by "classic" Willis?
Like I said before, I'm not slamming Powerbooks. They are beautiful machines.
As I stated in original post, I'm replacing "desktop" towers. So it's not going to get carried around very often. Well, the ocasional LAN party.
True... if you're replacing an Ars god box with the laptop, then the Overam is definitely the way to go to get comparable power.
Originally posted by MCQ
True... if you're replacing an Ars god box with the laptop, then the Overam is definitely the way to go to get comparable power.
But if you're not, then the PBG4 is still a very nice machine. My 17" PBG4 1.33GHz is still the envy of my collegues who all have 17" 3.2GHz PC laptops. For 90% of what we do (software architecture consulting), the PB is as good as if not better than the PC.
The big thing for me (and the collegues who have also made the switch) is Mac OS X. It makes an excellent Java development environment. is extremely stable and compares very well with the PCs for performance - except when it comes to games and other 3D stuff.
Then again, if I wanted a machine where the driving factor was gaming, then why would I want a laptop anyway?
Originally posted by Placebo
Yeah, the whole 'thin' obsession is pretty stupid.
you're pretty stupid.
as well as the other people in this thread saying this massive piece of shit is a superior product to the Powerbook.
The Powerbook has so many more uses for its price than that hunk of shit that it more than pays for itself.
Performance
Ok, give the hunk of shit the edge. But by how much. And how exactly do you measure performance on a laptop? Is it strict benchmarks? Is it performance/battery life percentage? Performance/portablitity? You want to play FPS. Well, in that case even a desktop replacement laptop is a dumbass choice to make. You can't upgrade it, it's already slow, and making it suitable for that use makes it unsuitable as a laptop. The performance is going to be good at best. Not great, not outstanding....gor games at least. The Powerbook will get buy....however, you'll have the added benefit of actually having a portable
Weight
2 pounds is not much more....riiiight. this is spoken like a true person who has never had a 7 pounds laptop and a 9 pound laptop in their posession to compare. two pounds is a significant additon. very noticeable and much heavier. especially once you add accessories and everything else in. every pound counts. i will make a bet, and im 99percent sure of it, that the PC's power adapter is significantly larger and heavier as well. The thing is also over twice as thick. It doesn't look nearly as well built, the ports have no thought to their placement, and its made of cheap material.
Overall value
Apple knows how to make laptops. They know how to make a machine painlessly portable. OS X is a dream to use on the road. with automatic syncing and recognition of networks and sleep and the interface in itself. OS X is superior and arguably more productive and has a better workflow. The machine is comparable in performance and the design is much superior, It's significantly lighter, thinner, and smaller overall. I really don't see how this is much of a comparison. Seems pretty one sided to me.
i will make a bet, and im 99percent sure of it, that the PC's power adapter is significantly larger and heavier as well.
There aren't [m]any laptop power supplies smaller than Apple's current one.
murbot, if you agreed with applenut's post, well...
Once again I'll state for the record, I think Powerbooks are beautiful machines. I think OS X is sweet.
Two important points made me choose the Overam over the Powerbook.
1- Most of my corporate clients are on Windoze.
2- I love gaming.
As far as the Overam being a "hunk of shit", you obviously have never seen one in the "flesh". Hence, you are speaking out of your ass. Upon close inspection, it is more solidy built than the Powerbook and to tighter tolerances. For example, the way the screen lid fits to the base, there's no "give" on the Overam. On most Powerbooks that I have examined, that lid "give" can be fairly pronounced. No big deal really. However, you don't know what you are talking about applenut.
1- Most of my corporate clients are on Windoze.
you're point. please share how it would not integrate and what incompatibilities you would have. this is usually the excuse people come up with who have no excuse
2- I love gaming.
see above for why you're a tool
As far as the Overam being a "hunk of shit", you obviously have never seen one in the "flesh". Hence, you are speaking out of your ass. Upon close inspection, it is more solidy built than the Powerbook and to tighter tolerances. For example, the way the screen lid fits to the base, there's no "give" on the Overam. On most Powerbooks that I have examined, that lid "give" can be fairly pronounced. No big deal really. However, you don't know what you are talking about applenut.
things that have no give break when they fall. things that have no give snap.
i claim I don't know what I'm talking about yet the only two arguments you come up with after being torn a new asshole are it isn't compatible and the screen has no give....o...and my physique.
weak.