Powerbook G4 1ghz, how good is it?

rudeboymcc

rudeboymcc

rudeboymcc

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Hi there. I have a 1.6ghz intel c2d laptop with vista on it, but i'm now looking for a laptop for programming java, c and c++ mainly. vista's not great at this.

Ive got an old powerbook G4 1ghz with 1gig ram. i was wondering how these processors perform and what it's comparable to in terms of speed to intel's processors.

i know it's a lot older, but it's not gonna be wasting it's power running windows (it's not even Tiger).

would it be slow if i put tiger on it?
 
In realistic terms 1Ghz G4 speed is around that of PIII 1400, maybe a tad more. That's floating point wise. Altivec Engine makes comparison in multimedia performance slightly more difficult.
 
You'll probably be better asking this in the Mac forums :p Ask a really nice mod to move it and you'll get more replies :)
 
well I'm not realy sure, it's 10.3. i know tiger is 10.4 and leopard is 10.5, so it's the one before tiger.

Do mods read every thread or do i need to e-mail on eof htem.

from what you guys are saying it's perfect for my needs, plus it even has a dvi output which hardly any pc laptops have.
 
Well, you can also install linux on G4 powerbooks without much of a problem - voila perfect development setup.
 
It sounds quite nice. It would be excellent with Tiger (or a flavor of Linux if that's your style ;))

Our mod here is Slackworth who is endowed with such copious slackage that they changed his name to match. :p I've RMA'd this thread, as I'm sure others have as well, so when he next checks the forums for such things he'll see our requests for moderation.
 
Linux on powerpc processors??

I never realised this was possible. I guess to some extent i wanted some experience with osx deeper than internet and itunes, but if i can put linux on it thats even better.

would the linux performance be similar to tiger?
 
It would be the same or better, depending on the distro in use. The bummer about PPC Linux is lack of 3rd party support with proprietary things. Notable examples are the Flash Mozilla plugin (Gnash is the FOSS alternative) and the proprietary video drivers. Getting hardware accelerated 3D would be difficult depending on the graphics chipset in use in the Powerbook. 2D will work just fine though. :)

Ubuntu linky: http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ports/releases/gutsy/release/
 
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