processor speed in regards to PC speed

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code777

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a friend of mine was asking me about Apples and he thought that the 1.2Ghz in my iBook "sounded" slow. But him being a DELL only guy (both desktop and laptop) he doesn't have any understanding of Apple processors. So I was curious. What would a 1.2Ghz processor be in comparison to a Intel Pent. IIII 2.6Ghz processor?

He also said that I must upgrade my HDD as 18.78GB left is not enough!? He said I should have bought the 14" (gee thanks)

thoughts? is he an idiot! :rolleyes:
 
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You can't actually compare the two in raw Mhz speeds.

Tell him to look at the latest Intel Centrino notebooks: They run at speeds around 1,5-1,7 Ghz, yet can still outperform some Pentium chips running at higher clockspeeds. Why?

And AMD actually gives their chips speeds in pentium equivalents, meaning a AMD Athlon 3200+ actually runs at a lower speed, but performs as fast as a Pentium 4 running at 3,2 Ghz.

So the speed (or mhz/ghz) a chip runs at is only 1 factor of how well a chip actually performs.

I can't give you an equivalent, but can tell you that other factors such as operating system efficiency and other factor that I don't know about play a bigger role than a few mhz more or less.

Also remember: The computer is only as fast as the software and the user. So if you take all day to finish that 1 page report, don't upgrade the system, motivate yourself! ;)

If you can work efficiently with your iBook, don't bother comparing mhz speeds, it isn't worth it IMO.

If on the other hand you get fed up of waiting for apps to open, files to play etc. THEN (and only then) do you look at updating your system. (Will not happen to you, that iBook should be snappy enough!)


As for the harddrive: 18.78 GB isn't a huge amount of space, but you can order the 12" with larger drives, so which model you buy (12 or 14") doesn't really matter.

18.78 isn't tons, but should be enough for the time being. (You could install tons of apps, or hold about 4000 songs or all your photos.....


If you find yourself running out of space, buy an external harddrive and store things you don't need on a regular basis on there...

That's what I've done.
 
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code777

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thanks for your insight!

now how much does an external HD cost? i thought they are pretty expensive. I guess I could always use my 40GB iPod right?
 
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Aptmunich said:
If you can work efficiently with your iBook, don't bother comparing mhz speeds, it isn't worth it IMO.


I concur.

My Dell laptop is a 1.3ghz but it can do everything I need.

I think 12in iBook is the way to go, the screen is big enough to see and the actual number of pixels that the screen can display is the same as a 14in. The 12in iBook is small and lighter, thus more portable which is a plus.

If you want a cheap external HD, just buy an internal hard drive and then get an USB enclosure for it, watch sites like slickdeals.org and you can find some great deals on hard drives. Just looking at newegg.com prices, you can get a USB 2.0 enclosure that is decent looking and white to match your iBook for $31 and then you can get a 200gb hard drive for $110, Total $141 and you have a huge external USB Hard drive. You can find much better deals on hard drives if you just watch the deals.

edit: I thought the 12in G4 iBooks came with a minumum hard drive of 30gb?
 
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code777

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Well yes it does have a 30GB but i guess free space left is only 18.78 or so GB!? Someone help me out here, my friend who was checking it out told me I only have 18.78GB available... does the OS X and other things take up the 10 or so GB's?
 
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code777 said:
Well yes it does have a 30GB but i guess free space left is only 18.78 or so GB!? Someone help me out here, my friend who was checking it out told me I only have 18.78GB available... does the OS X and other things take up the 10 or so GB's?

A hard drive that is advertised as 30gb is only really a 28gb hard drive because of the way they use 2^10 bytes / 1 kilobyte instead of the correct 2^10 bytes per kilobyte in calculating size. I have no idea where the rest of the space went though.
 
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performance wise, theres not much difference between a 1.2ghz mac and a 2.6ghz pc, and os x takes around 3 gigs up
 
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I currently just got the 12 inch ibook 1.2 ghz and in my opinion it's on par with a p4, although i don't find it as zippy as my p4 2.8. However, using it more and more I do believe that for a normal user the differences between between a p4 and 1.2 mac is not significant b/c if you are a casual user. The tradeoff that I am willing to take for speed, which is really just 2 seconds @ most is the fact OS X is a lot easier to use, learn and set up than XP. Also less headaches as well OS X seems to be less resource hungry than XP where I know there are tons of programs running to be ready for a quick start. i like OS X for what I am using it for i.e, web surfing, word processing and small editing. When I get Photoshop I will let you guys know if I find any significant differences in performance.
 
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true, you shouldnt see a big difference either once you install photoshop, and mac os x automatically allocates memory to programs that are in use/frontmost when they need it
allowing the mac to run more smoothly and at speeds that equal those of a pc with a proccessor twice to 3 times greater than yours.
 
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Macman said:
true, you shouldnt see a big difference either once you install photoshop

Just simply installing software should never slow down your system, no matter what OS.
 
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code777

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so Mac OS X takes up at least 3GB, does this include iLife, etc... I mean it says 18.78GB available and it just seems like a lot of GB's used. Maybe I should uninstall programs i don't want (iDVD, iMovie, etc...) to try to free up some more space...?
 
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ilife is another/seerate 3 gigs
 
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When I first got my iBook with a 30GB hard drive and before I put any programs on it I have about 20GB free.
 
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Well you can reclaim some space if you want to:

Garageband for instance install 1GB of loops and another 500MB of demo tracks.

Find and delete them if you don't need/use garageband. You can also trash things like seperate languages if you only use english. I've trashed all language files except english, german and french (brit in germany with french mate, so I'm keeping those)

Any apps you don't need (appleworks maybe?) trash 'em!

You can always reinstall later if you need them...
 
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code777

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well i trashed iDVD since I have no superdrive, trashed the languages, but I might want to mess with Garageband since I am a musician. What about the games that come with it? I think there are two games, one with a flying dino and the other is some wacky ball!? hahaha. Chess I probably won't use.

What about that other program where you can read Magazines? I doubt I'd use that. Quicken 2005 i'll never use. That graph program I'll never use...

Appleworks I think I need as its the only word processor on the iBook.

Anyone use the above programs much?
 
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delete those, not very useful, and what about textedit? its a great word proccessing app, comes with os x.
 
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code777

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text edit? hmmm, i overlooked that one - how is it in comparison to Appleworks
 
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well, in aappleworks, you can also paint and make charts/graphs, textedit is only for wordproccessing type stuff, it can automatically check spelling and all sorts of stuff, its like M$ word, except you cant insert images, though I think you can insert images somehow.
 

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