Is the PB G5 worth the wait?

[chunkyeggfoo]

So....the PB G4 is dropping in price soon. The G5 is rumored to give birth to a Powerbook in June. But given its heat issues, we may receive a lame adequete duck at launch while the G4 has all it's kinks fixed. So the main question about these two version is Speed over stability. Which one would you choose?

[chunkyeggfoo]

Is the PB G5 worth the wait?

[MTP]

Well we have already spoke on the issue.
I believe a PB G5 is possible with little or no heat issues if the start with like a 1.5G G5 PB.

I would not recommend getting a new PB because it will not be 100% compatible with Tiger coming out around the corner. Plus unless apple annouces another "coupon deal with the new PB coming out on Tuesday I believe, than you will be shelling out another $129 for Tiger in a few months.

Also the store still list iLife04 as being bundled with the currnt PB.  I hope the new G4 versions will have the new iLife05 bundled with it.

To be honest it is a very hard question to answer.
Apple has been known to have a few flaws in their 1 spinouts and they get fixed in the following versions.
Why since you already have a PB are the next rev of PB looking like a great buy right now?
Plus it you are stuck on the G4 over a rev 1 G5 version, I would still recommend waiting for the G5 version to hit because than the G4 versions will drop big time in price.

[chunkyeggfoo]

I recently sold my PB G4 because doing design work on a 12" was really getting on my nerves. I know I want a 15"....just a matter of "when".

[stebesplace]

This final powerbook revision will be better, and more than just a 'bump' in speed. It is using a different processor, freescale, so it iwll have better performance over the 1.5 on the high end. In addition, its the 4th major release, so ALOT of kinks have all been taken out. I find it hard to predict what will happen next, wether it will be a dual G4 or just a G5 single. The problem is heat, and its hard to get rid of it quietly. I probobly would say NO to buying the first release of the new PB with the G5. Wait a good year till everything gets sorted out.

As for tiger, if it gets released in May or June, you can be sure that you will get a cupon for it if you buy a new powerbook. You can also be sure that ilife'05 will come with the new PB. I may shoot myself in the foot, but there is no reason not to have it. It comes on the new minimac, and thats altready shipping. Ilife'04 is going by the way side, though still proboboly sent out on current powerbooks.

One more thing that just came to my attention. From what I see, and someone who just a few days ago got their new powerbook, there was a cupon for ilife'05 to be able to get from apple as a complimentary upgrade. Not sure if he was on some special thing or what, but I saw a legit, or seemingly legit coupon in the box.

-- Stebes

[gwimby]

at this point I'd wait for any purchase until Tiger emerges.
Watching Jobs at the keynote I was impressed w/ the demonstrated
abilities in tiger, so unless the mooney is burning a hole in your pocket....
I think I read that a new revision of the G5 has the heat issues under more control,
so it may be more of an issue of supply rather than technical limitations.
last year didn't Powermac and imac shippments get substantially delayed?

[stebesplace]

Along with the displays. Seemed last year ALOT got delayed big time.

[UglyShoes]

I would tell you to wait,  soon as the G5 powerbooks come out your going to be bummed about having gotten a g4 one so recently.

There is no engineering challenge to this laptop. 970s are not hot, they cooler then any desktop X86 chip out there,  IBM is getting their with chip production, but for now Apple has had bigger priorities for models,  get the desktops G5 first, laptops don't need to be superpowerful, so they can wait till the others get out.

Also the longer apple waits the more time it gives them to see where markets are going for things. And waiting till tiger just makes sense.  I suspect the G5 PBs will be a big change, not just a new CPU, expect some new styling and so forth. Things have gotten now where few are buying PBs cause eveyone knows it can't be much longer.   For a long time they were still selling just fine, so again, no push for them.

Also all products from apple get delayed,   if G5 PBs hit this summer, don't expect them to get in peoples hands for a few months. This is just the apple way.

[chunkyeggfoo]

Has the G5 processor speed for the PB been announced yet? Can't find it anywhere.

[gwimby]

Current Rumors are a G4 speed bump to 1.67ghz very soon, but no info on how fast a G5 PB maight be AFAIK.

[jonthelopper]

Having just checked the uk store for the price of the powerbooks since the price drop i noticed the lack of extras avaliable like second battery, keynote, Airport. with the upgrade possible being announced tomorrow, there may also be an updated range of prephials (alumimium airport anyone?)

off topic- should the mini have been white polycarbonate same as iMAC, eMac & iBook, as its aimed at the comsumer market. or is apple begining to move the entire range the an aluminium casing?

[UglyShoes]

well, the mini is middle of the road,  part Aluminum, part Poly (pretty sure the top/bottom are plastic.    

And since it's headless like the powermac, but cheap like the other consumer models, being both makes sense.

Note, the mini ipod is metal too.  Also there is a rumor of the iPod going to aluminium.  

Really the metal cases look better, and white plastic looks bad really fast.  Like they never look as good in person, go look at imacs, they start looking icky real quick.   I'm still amazed apple doesn't have a freaking aluminum keyboard.  Like so the monitor matches now, but the keyboard still doesn't.

[chunkyeggfoo]

Well, after a lot of googling and reading, I've decided to wait until Tiger comes out and buy whatever the current PB is at the time. The PB G5 is getting a lot of bad press.

[MTP]

give us some links there chunky, I'd love to read on some G5 info.

[chunkyeggfoo]

Granted, all the reading is from forums debating on the legitamacy of the G5 Powerbook but I'm leaning on the side where the G5 is a good year away.

quote:
PowerBook G5 will be "mother of all thermal challenges"

Link

[JhuFrank]

Chunky,
I think that is a good call. Getting the Tiger version of the PB is going to land you with a very mature and stable hardware architecture, along with the newest version of the OS. I think that could end up being nothing but positive. On the other hand, let's remember the Titanium PB (working on a corpse of one right now), first gen of the G4 PBs, cooling issues, crappy architecture, case very prone to warping, and so on. I think the first generation of the G5 PB's will end up with similar issues.
A 15' PB with Tiger and a gig of ram is a pretty darn good choice.
And my take on the G4 vs. the G5: I work with single proc G4's, Dualie G4's and the gamut of G5s at work. As far as basic work stuff, I see no difference between my G4 733 and my dual 2.5 at work. Where I see the real difference is when I am doing real time video editing on the dual G5, that is where it kicks real butt.

[UglyShoes]

Something that doesn't exist yet outside of apple cannot get bad press.

Secondly, the thermal issue is crap,  Pretty much every laptop out there now has greater thermal issues. A 2.0 Ghz 970fx (the 90 nm version of the 970 apple now uses) puts out 25 watts of heat.  Depending on the speed you get it's cooler then the G4 currently used in powerbooks.

The problem is there is a lot of idiots out there shooting out stupid stuff.  You will tend to hear people saying the G5s put out a ton of heat and thats why the Powermacs have huge heat sinks.  The Powermacs have huge heat sinks cause apple had the space to do that, thus make things even better.  The cpu fans on my dual 1.8 barely move, the system has such a huge sink to keep it quiet, and thats that.  I'm not sure if mine is using 970fx or 970s,  the 1.8 970s put out 51 watts, so even with both my cpus going full bore if i have the older 970s I'm still less then a prescot.

Many point to a comment made by apple people talking about how much of a challenge it will be and so forth and how they won't be out anytime soon, the comment that goes to is now over a year old.  Plus thats what you expect apple to say. They arn't going to hint to it being anytime soon, that would kill sales, apple is all about surprise.  Also apple wants the Powerbook g5s to sound like some huge achievement. It won't be,  if anything they are busy restyling them and giving them a new look to separate them from the current ones. Come this summer we will be nearing 2 years since the first G5s, it's Powerbook time.  

I'm really curious to see what the come up with, since i'm thinking about working towards my masters part time in the evenings and the idea of doing things with a 12 inch powerbook looks nice. That or be able to pick up the G4 12 inch cheap then.

Far as the first gen G4 PBs well,  they are more of an example of marketing winning over engineering.  The Titanium bit was just dumb, thus why they did away with it. Also a few years ago makers ability to handle heat was not what it is today.