iBook G4 vs. iBook G3

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Roger - 22 Jan 2005 19:28 GMT

Ok I've had a G3 iBook600 combo I've loved for a few years, and recently
bought an iBook G4 (1gH) which I like also, but here's a few things I've
noticed:

The G4 has a cheesier looking and feeling interior casing, keyboard,
etc. The G3's were quite beautiful with the translucent white keys and
the shinier interior casing (Apple really nailed the looks at this time
imo!). The G4's interior, including the keyboard, is a very flat light
grey--not bad, but it doesn't jump out at you like the G3's looks. The
"ibook G4" font on the display is even boring compared to the classic
Apple font of the G3.

The G4's keyboard is a lot faster but a lot noisier too. Springy sprangy
clickety clack, lol.

The G4's hd is noisier, which I think is due to the cheaper casing.
Maybe the 'book is lighter tho, not sure, kind of feels lighter.

Lap heat is about the same tho which isn't bad.

The G4 boosted me into Quartz Extreme (right?), upped the processor and
the megahertz, but the gui didn't get noticeably snappier. Still a
little slow to respond for my taste. Still about the same amount of
rainbow balls, perceptably speaking.

The G4's screen is *much* brighter. (Is this due to the Q Extreme?)
(Do these things dull with age?) It's also a lot *whiter* tho. Just a
whiter look to everything--taking some getting used to. I actually have
to turn it down a little.

I like the slot-loader. Nice to have.

Oh well, any comments appreciated. Hope this is useful to someone.

Rog

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John Johnson - 22 Jan 2005 21:33 GMT

[snip]

> The G4 boosted me into Quartz Extreme (right?), upped the processor and
> the megahertz, but the gui didn't get noticeably snappier. Still a
> little slow to respond for my taste. Still about the same amount of
> rainbow balls, perceptably speaking.

How much RAM you got in it? All the people here recommend adding RAM for
improving performance. How much to add is less certain, but you want a
total of _at least_ 512MB, and 768MB or 1GB is preferable. Note that you
only have one RAM slot on the iBook, so will have to purchase a card of
the desired size (and see about selling the old one) in order to
increase your RAM.

> The G4's screen is *much* brighter. (Is this due to the Q Extreme?)
> (Do these things dull with age?) It's also a lot *whiter* tho. Just a
> whiter look to everything--taking some getting used to. I actually have
> to turn it down a little.

The brightness and color temperature difference is a result of improved
LCD's, not the hardware acceleration. Using a calibration program (e.g.
ColorSync utility, SuperCal, etc.) can improve things, especially if you
work under varying lighting conditions. As you suspect, LCD screens do
'dull' with age. I don't know whether the LCD itself changes, but the
CCFL (cold-cathode fluorescant light) does get dimmer and change color
temperature as it ages.

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johajohn@indianahoosiers.edu
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Cathy Stevenson - 23 Jan 2005 19:36 GMT

> [snip]
>
[quoted text clipped - 9 lines]
> the desired size (and see about selling the old one) in order to
> increase your RAM.

He may not have an "old one". The machine has 256 on the board and one
expansion slot.

Cathy

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"there's a dance or two in the old dame yet." - mehitabel

C.Stevenson, M.D.
cats1921@invalidsonic.net

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John Johnson - 24 Jan 2005 05:27 GMT

> > [snip]
> >
[quoted text clipped - 14 lines]
>
> Cathy

Good point, I had been assuming a filled RAM slot. So, (to the OP) check
the RAM. If you've got an open slot, buy some and shove it in.

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Later.
johajohn@indianahoosiers.edu
Let 'indiana' be a 'noln', and 'hoosiers' be a 'solkk'.
Leave only the 'noln' and .edu after the @ to reply .

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Roger - 23 Jan 2005 20:15 GMT

> [snip]
>
[quoted text clipped - 9 lines]
> the desired size (and see about selling the old one) in order to
> increase your RAM.

That's a good point, my G3 has more RAM installed. But honestly
MenuMeters doesn't ever show more than half a pie. Maybe that's not
what I should be measuring? It shows inactive, active, wired, used,
free, total, pageins, pageouts, swap files, etc., etc. What's relevant
here? This iBook is primarily for Internet stuff. (The old G3 will be
running OS 9 in the music studio.)

Thanks!
Rog

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Bob Harris - 24 Jan 2005 00:05 GMT

> > [snip]
> >
[quoted text clipped - 19 lines]
> Thanks!
> Rog

The most telling thing for low memory would be 'pageouts' The OS will
pageout when it needs more memory for something else, but only has
modified memory that first needs to be written to disk so it is not lost.

after that 'pageins'. The OS will pagein a lot of things. When you
execute a program the OS memory maps the executable and all the code
libraries and then pages in the code and initialized data as needed.

But a pagein can also occur if a modified part of memory was paged out
and now it needs to come back in.

Or a pagein can occur if the OS decided that part of a programs
read-only code was not needed right now, and the memory given over to
some other uses, but then when it is needed it gets paged back in again.

the reason pagein and pageout are important is because they perform as
disk speeds. And disk speeds tend to be measured in the 10's of
milliseconds (1000 milliseconds/second) vs memory speeds which are
several orders of magnitude faster, and main memory is slow compared to
the L2 cache, and the L2 cache is slow compared to the on-chip cache.

Anyway, back to pageout and pagein. You will always have a lot of
pagein activity if or no other reason than you are running programs.
but if you have equally high pageout activity then you are memory
starved.

My rule of thum is a) am I happy with the performance? b) using the
'uptime' command in the terminal to find out how long the system has
been up, is the pageout count divided by the uptime giving me a large
number of pageouts per day (or maybe per hour) and factoring in how many
hours per day am I actually using my system.

Bob Harris

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Mac Forum / General / Portable Macs / January 2005

iBook G4 vs. iBook G3