I want a mac

[FieldDoc]

I am a well established windows user. I have no real problems with windows but I am intrigued by macs. I am looking to buy a notebook but I only realistically have up to £1000 to spend. I have no qualms buying a used/refurbished unit.

I do not understand the hardware differences between macs and pcs. For instance, why buy an apple notebook that runs at 800mhz when I can get a 2ghz pc notebook?

I will not really be using the mac to play games (apart from Uplink of course!) but it will be used for office work and web browsing in the main. It must be able to network with my home PC running XP Pro. If possible, I would like a CD-RW drive....a DVD Drive is a second priorty.

Any suggestions?

Many thanks,

[HellforLeather]

Good Choice FieldDoc

There are many MAC notebooks around at the moment. I personally have an Ibook. Running alot of business software, and games. But I would say, try to look to the Powerbook G4's, they now make a combo drive, that does it all. A good place to browse through Mac hardware would be www.jigsaw24.com.

My company buys most of its hardware and software from these guys. And they always try and accommodate your needs.

Good luck

[Stewsburntmonkey]

The Mhz issue is a non-issue.  Mhz simply tells how many cycles per second the processor does.  It is not a measure of the work being done in each cycle.  The Mac gets much more work done with its cycles than Intel does.  It is hard to do any real comparision of the two platforms, but generally a Mac can compete with a PC that has 2-3 times the Mhz.  For example a 733 Mhz Mac is the equal of a 1.8 Ghz P4.  :)

[FieldDoc]

Thanks guys.

I think the ibook is the only mac in my price range (since I want a portable). Do ibooks come with OS X? Also, how much is a decent amount of RAM to plump for....I love having lots of apps running at once (e.g, media player, web browser and word processor).

[Stewsburntmonkey]

I would get at least 256 Mb of RAM, though the more the better.  The ibooks do come with OSX.  :)

[FieldDoc]

I've been looking at an 800mhz 12.1" notebook with 384mb of RAM. It only has a CD-ROM drive (shame). Would I be able to connect it up to good old (lol) XP Pro and use that PC to burn files if I needed to?

One other question, I know nothing about G3, G4 or any of their mates. I am a little worried though that G3 sounds quite old...will it be able to cope with the new version of OS X (I think its called Panther) or would it just be futile to try to run it? I only ask as I don't want to shell out what is a lot of money for me on a computer that won't be able to run a thing in a year? Is this likely to be the case or is that just the bain of PC users?

[Stewsburntmonkey]

The G3 is an older chipset, but still quite good.  OSX Panther is said to run fine on iBooks.  I know of a beta tester running it smoothly on the system you are looking at getting.  There should be no problem connecting the iBook to an XP computer, I am assuming you would be networking the two.  :)

[FieldDoc]

Thats right. Well I think you've just about converted me Stew. Now where's my cheque book......

[NeoThermic]

In my pocket ;
Tell us how your conversion goes, cause I'm intrested in dabbling with a mac system if I stumble across one...


NeoThermic

Oh yeah, nearly forgot, here is your cheque book...
/me hands the book to FieldDoc

[tabasco boy]

Quote: from Stewsburntmonkey on 2:56 pm on Aug. 7, 2003[br]The Mhz issue is a non-issue.  Mhz simply tells how many cycles per second the processor does.  It is not a measure of the work being done in each cycle.  The Mac gets much more work done with its cycles than Intel does.  It is hard to do any real comparision of the two platforms, but generally a Mac can compete with a PC that has 2-3 times the Mhz.  For example a 733 Mhz Mac is the equal of a 1.8 Ghz P4.  :)

stew i agree on what your saying but i'm confussed (computer wise)as long as i can remember, been reading articles that for Example i read a mac 500 Mhz can beat with no question asked a intel 500 Mhz how do they actually benchmark this things as they run the same frequency/clock speed. i'm sure a 500 Mhz is a 500 Mhz whatever we do so if a mac 500 can process faster than an intel 500 Mhz i'm sure the mac processor is not a 500.

and that goes to a intel and amd processor some are saying a 2ghz intel can crunch more than a 2ghz amd but how? they have the same clock speed.

(Edited by tabasco boy at 4:25 am on Aug. 8, 2003)

[NeoThermic]

Its actualy down to the archetexture [major spelling mistake ;]

Think about AMD's XP line
they are rated at 1.7Ghz, but can beat a 2.2Ghz P4 any day.

Sort of like a P3 1.2Ghz is better than a P3 1.2Ghz celeron, its down to what is and isn't there, and how its optomised.

The real rating you want is MIPS, - Millions of Instructions Per Second. The higher that number is, the better.


Hope that sorta helps

NeoThermic

(Edited by NeoThermic at 4:33 am on Aug. 8, 2003)

[FieldDoc]

My impression about the difference between Mac chips and PC chips is as follows:

Try to imagine a nice Ferrari Enzo and a big fat dumpster truck. Now imagine that both these cars are asked to transport half a tonne of dirt over the same distance. Now, both are powerful vehicles. The ferrari (pentium 4) is faster (clock speed) but can't carry as much dirt (data) as the dumpster (mac G5) and so therefore takes the same time or longer to do the same journey (task).

Hope this makes sense.....have pieced it together whilst researching macs for myself. I thinik in a similar way you can use the same comparison between the Pentium and the Athlon too.




(Edited by FieldDoc at 5:48 pm on Aug. 8, 2003)

[HellforLeather]

Close, the cycles per second are the same, but the amount of instructions the processor handles per second is different. Hence the claim that MACs out peform PC's.

I have an Ibook G3 (White) with 256mb Ram 600Mhz Chipset,  CDRW drive and it still surprises me how quick it performs.

You can also get a piece of Software from Connextix, called Vitual PC. Allowing you to run a Windows OS on your MAC if really need too. Not to good for games though. Uplink doesn't run to well under that environment.

Good Luck

[Woelf]

A Cycle has a 1 and 0
PC CPU's do calculations on the 1 (or the 0(one of the 2 anyway))
Mac CPU's do calculations at both the 1 and the 0
ergo twice as many calculations in the same amount of cycles

[FieldDoc]

What I want to know is how come the 12" PB is $1599 (£999) from the US apple store whereas we on the UK apple store we have to fork out £1299 ($2078). I thought the PB was made in Taiwan!!!!

SO UNFAIR!!