latest generation powerbook 12" or ibook 14"?

uglyman

I want some opinions here... if I were to buy a powerbook or ibook from the latest generation (which I plan to do soon) should I get the 12" powerbook or the 14" ibook? The price is about the same, although I would need more ram in the ibook and a usb-wifi dongle for either.

although I might run osX on a small partition just to play with, I will really only be using gentoo for anything important.

If you don't know the specs on them you can go to apple.com and click store and then find the same info I have seen (although I wish they had a little more detailed info up)

If I had the dough I would go for the smallest powerbook with a pcmcia slot so I could replace the wifi easier... but I can't really see spending that much right now. I have heard that the powerbooks with ATI are supported better than the nvidia ones... which leads me to believe that the ibook may be a better choice

any thoughts?

schiznik · Posted: Thu Apr 21, 2005 12:22 pm Post subject:

I have a 12" powerbook (rev A 867Mhz), whilst my flatmate has a G3 14.1" iBook.

Whilst neither of us run linux on them (ok so mine has a partition waiting for linux when i feel the need for it), from a purely hardware point of view, I would go with the powerbook.

The iBook always feels very flimsy & fragile compared to the solid metal-ness of my powerbook.

I'm not sure how much of a difference between the current i and Power Books there is, but when I bought mine, the extra bus/ram speeds, the internal bluetooth etc swayed me towards the powerbook.

Oh, and keep OS X on there, at least initially - I was going to run linux on mine, but after half an hour of OS X I decided i probably wouldnt need to. Nearly 2 yrs later the linux partion is still a temporary media store, and DarwinPorts handles *my* linux on a laptop needs quite nicely...

In short, both are a helluva lot nicer than most intel/amd laptops, with imho the powerbook being very worth the extra little amount of ££

mil0t · n00b Joined: 24 Jun 2003 Posts: 62

My opinion is to get iBook G4 14" , i have an iBook G3 now and i am waiting to get an iBook G4 14" soon, so do what you like but if you listen to me ... get an iBook

.

//mil0t
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xavier10 · Posted: Thu Apr 21, 2005 1:20 pm Post subject:

I went for the powerbook but money was no concern and I needed a lot of memory (2gb).

One of my colleagues has an ibook 14". It is also a nice laptop, but of much lower quality (keyboard not so good, speakers very bad, not so nice build quality). I have no experience for the hardware of ibook and linux.
I would probably still go powerbook 12".

As regards OSX, you should keep it as long as you are not sure you will get all you need running under linux.

My experience with OSX is bad though: many programs with few options and tons of effects you cannot disable. Lousy graphical interface, that cause me to loose time. I hate to wait for the nice effects to complete or not being able to know precisely where to click to resize a window without triggering something else...
You may love it but you may also hate it. I mainly found that when I want to do something new, I always find help with linux but I never find the adequate documentation for OSX.

Little Nemo · Posted: Thu Apr 21, 2005 4:12 pm Post subject:

I have a 12" PowerBook which I am very happy with. I did not go for a bigger display because I like to carry the machine everywhere I go which the 12" PB is perfect for.

However, I mostly use OS X on this PB, so I can simply close the lid and put it to sleep any time. I only shut down the OS when rebooting into Gentoo at home. As sleep doesn't work under Linux on this machine yet (because of the Nvidia graphics chip), I don't use Linux on the road. If I were to use the PowerBook mainly at home, I'd opt for a bigger display.

uglyman · Posted: Fri Apr 22, 2005 7:24 pm Post subject:

uglyman · Posted: Tue May 03, 2005 11:19 pm Post subject:

well I changed my mind totally and went with an ibook 12 inch last night. I just realized that after adding a usb-wifi (since airport extreme won't work) and the other things I wanted I was going to be over budget... I probably would have done it anyway, but I really don't have time to mess with the unsupported nvidia chips in the powerbook right now. I was thinking maybe the 14 inch ibook, but I don't want to lug around that big ol thing everywhere.

thanks for the advice. So far I am very happy with it. I am about half way through a gentoo install on it and all is going smoothly.

GNUtoo · Veteran Joined: 05 May 2005 Posts: 1919

but...if i remember...the old ibook 12" have an internal pcmcia
http://homepage.mac.com/macinside/PhotoAlbum36.html
and the sony wifi card fit into (with some minor moding of the sony card)
is it like this for the new ibook/powerbook???
or is it mini-pci
or another format(mainboard,shuffle...)

GNUtoo · Veteran Joined: 05 May 2005 Posts: 1919

http://www.osxcompatible.free.fr/
there is some pcmcia cards

GNUtoo · Veteran Joined: 05 May 2005 Posts: 1919

avantages of buying a 12" (ibook or powerbook)
-realy transportable(long battery,transportable notebook)
-dvd reader inside...(dvd video,livecd...(secutity live cd could be use to siff wifi network))
-wifi:acces to free hotspot/hacking(lol)
-bluetooth:bluetooth headphone could be used with an ip-phone software(good combinaison with wifi) and be conected to a bluetooth phone if there is no wifi network(too expensive for me but some people might have the use of it for example a person who need to work evrywhere)
-not so expensive respect to i386 ultraportable centrinos notebooks(the cd-rom is not always integrated)
-better graphic card than intel integrated graphic...

disavantages of a 12" (ibook or powerbook)
-no external pcmcia(i hope there is an internal)
-no gigabit ethernet (very usefull for me:no need of a giant hard-drive,acces to the network space server thar share evrything(games,music,divx,software,boot livecd, boot distributions...)(not yet implemented))
-better graphic card could be aprecited (for beeing able to play lastest games)
-no windows emulation

if the disavantages are fixed i would consider it the best notebook (with the little disavantage of not beeing x86 compatible because the emulator are not yet funtioning)

JoseJX · Retired Dev Joined: 28 Apr 2002 Posts: 2774

The "internal" PCMCIA slots on the old iBooks are for the original Airport, they are not on the newer models.

The things that are currently unsupported on the 12" Powerbook are:
nVidia graphics Chipset (No 3D acceleration)
Sleep (Because of the nVidia chipset)
Airport Extreme (No Wireless)
I'm not sure about the GigE, I know the chipset is supported, but it might be only at lower speeds (10/100). I'm not sure.

Since the 12" iBook uses the ATi 9200 chipset, it supports sleep and 3D acceleration, but one drawback of these models is the lack of a pcmcia slot for a wireless card.

To better answer some of your original questions, if you're looking to play games like Unreal Tournament, Doom3 etc., then Linux/PPC isn't what you're looking for. Although OSX can be run on Linux with MOL, it isn't 3D accelerated, so you'll need to Dual Boot with OSX anyway. Honestly, if gaming is your #1 priority (or even really high on your list) then PPC probably isn't your platform.

Good luck with your decision.
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GNUtoo · Veteran Joined: 05 May 2005 Posts: 1919

sleep unsuported??? mabe it was fixed only on the ibook and not the powerbook
gigabit ethernet are present on ibook/powerbook but not on the 12" that would be so cool if they could put the 1000 in next ibook/powerbook versions

JoseJX · Retired Dev Joined: 28 Apr 2002 Posts: 2774

Right, the 12" Powerbook doesn't support sleep because of the nVidia chipset. The 12" does only have 10/100, sorry.
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uglyman · Posted: Sun May 08, 2005 4:11 am Post subject: