!stop press! - bloodline buys a Powerbook G4

[bloodline]

The new 12" Powerbook G4 with a 1.5Ghz CPU and a 60gig HD might fill my needs...

2 large obstacles are present. Firstly, no Mac version of Adobe Audition... But at a push I could cope with Logic Audio 7 (despite it costing 3 times as much...).

Secondly, ONE MOUSE BUTTON!!!!... I spent a couple of hours at an apple store yesterday and grew to hate the limitation with much passion.

Anyway I need to run this thing away from a power source... for extended periods... while powering a 20Watt audio interface from the firewire...

could anyone give me an idea of what duration I might get from a full charge?

[bloodline]

Doobrey wrote:
@Bloodline.
 Dunno if this helps about the power useage,
 Got a 14" 1.3Ghz G4 iBook here with 512mb ram, just done a full charge and it reckons it has 6h 26 mins left. Although that's just laying here in bed typing a reply, under "normal" use I get 4-5 hours.

Well, if I can get 2 hours of use then I'm happy... I'm gonna take my Audio interface down to the apple store and see if they'll let me run some tests...

[bloodline]

lorddef wrote:
"ONE MOUSE BUTTON!!!!"

I have my mac on my KVM via a usb->ps2 adapter and I was suprised that both mousebuttons function as they would in windows, i.e left mouse does clicky stuff and right brings up menus etc, and the scroll wheel works too.

yup, that's good to know, I have nice little Logitech (2 button + scroll wheel) USB mouse here that I was hoping to use with it.

The problem is that hardly any apps take advantage of two mouse buttons, as Apple don't provide them as standard.

[bloodline]

itix wrote:

The new 12" Powerbook G4 with a 1.5Ghz CPU and a 60gig HD might fill my needs..

Dont you know it is dead? See here. :-D Sell it while it is still worth of something ;-)

:lol:

Seriously for a second, how does one get application to show up on the desktop in MacOSX... lets say, the application disapears for some reason, then when you click on the icon to open it up again, the title bar changes to your app, but none of the windows open :-?

[bloodline]

dammy wrote:
Blood, why now a powerbook unless your adding to your computer museum?   :-?

Dammy

My current laptop just doesn't give enough time on it's batteries, doesn't have a 6wire firewire and it gets much too hot... it's also too big and heavy to be a decent portable... also it has a fan intake on the underside of the unit which means that you can't put it on uneven surfaces...

The Powerbook G4 12" has none of those issues. I also noticed that the PowerBook runs Logic audio really well.

-Edit- Plus I really like the look of the Powerbook (I always have).

[bloodline]

Karlos wrote:

bloodline wrote:

Seriously for a second, how does one get application to show up on the desktop in MacOSX... lets say, the application disapears for some reason, then when you click on the icon to open it up again, the title bar changes to your app, but none of the windows open :-?

I get this with firefox on OSX a lot :-D

Typically you can have an application open with no windows presently open or if some are, they may be minimised and languishing around near the trashcan on the dock.

You can also use apple tab in an analogous way to alt tab under windows. If you are using OSX 10.3, you can also sometimes use the expose feature to find windows that have sneakily crept out of sight.

Gah.. OSX is a PITA...

[bloodline]

mdma wrote:

bloodline wrote:

Karlos wrote:

bloodline wrote:

Seriously for a second, how does one get application to show up on the desktop in MacOSX... lets say, the application disapears for some reason, then when you click on the icon to open it up again, the title bar changes to your app, but none of the windows open :-?

I get this with firefox on OSX a lot :-D

Typically you can have an application open with no windows presently open or if some are, they may be minimised and languishing around near the trashcan on the dock.

You can also use apple tab in an analogous way to alt tab under windows. If you are using OSX 10.3, you can also sometimes use the expose feature to find windows that have sneakily crept out of sight.

Gah.. OSX is a PITA...

Stick Ubuntu on it, and only run Mac-on-Linux for the OSX software you need!  There's the double bonus of being able to run AROS-PPC hosted on Ubuntu at the same time as OSX! :-D

I'm not sure that would work for the task which I require it... That tiny little G4 is gonna have a hard enough time running Logic Audio and driving my 10 channel audio interface alone without the joy of Linux getting in the way... :-)

[bloodline]

mdma wrote:

Just overclock the {bleep} and water cool it then! ;-)

Then I may as well stick with my existing Laptop :-P

[bloodline]

minator wrote:
There's plenty of audio apps for them though.

If by "plenty", you mean "expensive"... then yeah ;-)

[bloodline]

Is it possible to just install a decent desktop and use it instead of finder?

[bloodline]

It seems that Apple are going to move to x86 afterall... for laptops next year, at least. So where does this leave me? :-(

[bloodline]

mdma wrote:

bloodline wrote:
It seems that Apple are going to move to x86 afterall... for laptops next year, at least. So where does this leave me? :-(

In the dark until Herr Jobs gives his rally later today! :-)

Yeah, it's a good job (excuse the pun) I didn't buy one on saturday :-)

Where can I find out details of his speech?

[bloodline]

mdma wrote:

I say just buy one Matt.  So what if they do go x86?  It won't suddenly stop your new G4 from working.

Yeah, but I'm already skeptical about the machines performance...

Ok, I've had Logic audio running 8 tracks (with plenty of effects) + Reason on a 1Ghz AthlonXP before... and that was pretty much maxed... When I tried to run the same on a Mac Laptop 2 years ago (I forget what the processor was, but the thing cost £1800... probably ~800Mhz...). It simply couldn't do it.

Now the Powerbook is running at 1.5Ghz and has 512Meg of RAM... I'm hoping that it will be able to cope and run for at least 2 hours on it's batteries while doing it.

Maybe I would be better off looking for a Pentium-M laptop with a 6wire Firewire port... But I can't find 6wire laptops anywhere.

[bloodline]

mdma wrote:

Maybe I would be better off looking for a Pentium-M laptop with a 6wire Firewire port... But I can't find 6wire laptops anywhere.

Can you not get some kind of adapter cable?

No, the 6Wire Firewire provides power, the 4 Wire one doesn't so if you use a 6->4 cable you then have to power the device externally... which makes the whole mobile thing pointless... as I've discovered with my exisiting "normal" laptop which has a 4wire Firewire :-(

I really need to talk to others who have Powerbooks and can provide me with real world figures for perfomance... the spods at the apple store (the one on Regents Street) just hype the hardware so much, I left the shop thinking that the 1.5Ghz PowerBook G4 would make an 8 way opteron server look underpowered.. :-(

[bloodline]

mdma wrote:

I say just buy one Matt.  So what if they do go x86?  It won't suddenly stop your new G4 from working.

Another issue is that, to use the machine, I'll have to make a massive investment in software (about £600)... that's not something I'm prepared to just throw away, because Jobsie decides to change tack...


-Edit- Slightly off topic, but very cool link: http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Hardware/Developer_Notes/Macintosh_CPUs-G4/12inchPowerBookG4/0_Preface/chapter_1_section_1.html