PowerBook G4 1 GHz performance

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Steven - 13 Mar 2005 12:01 GMT

Greetings,
I am new to "Apple family", only recently bought the above laptop.
While I am impressed with the quality of the machine and its fantastic
ability to display graphics, I am disappointed with its speed related
to editing of my photos in Photoshop CS.
Most of my photos are RAWs, converted into about 24 Mb TIFF files.
The process of opening multiple photographs is also painful.

Could you please advise, whether increasing RAM is going to offer a
dramatic difference? I currently have 768Mb RAM, 167 bus speed (it is
an aluminium model)
I know, that more RAM (for what I do) is better, but comparing to my
previous laptop (which I still got - Sony VAIO Z1 1.6 GHz Centrino
with 1Gb RAM) this one is very sluggish...
I do not want a desktop - do I need to buy PowerBook 1.67GHz or is
more RAM going to offer a significant improvement in speed?

Thanks for your help
Steven

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Jim - 13 Mar 2005 22:00 GMT

> Greetings,
> I am new to "Apple family", only recently bought the above laptop.
[quoted text clipped - 15 lines]
> Thanks for your help
> Steven

Hey Steven,

You can open an application in your utilities folder called "Activity
Monitor." This will allow you to see how much System Memory is being
used or is free at any given time. Launch it and run it in the
background as you work with some photos. If you have no free memory,
you would certainly benefit from more RAM.

I suspect that another factor would be slow hard disk access (at least
versus a desktop machine), but I wouldn't have expected it to be that
much slower than the SONY.

Good luck!
Jim

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news.rcn.com - 23 Mar 2005 15:01 GMT

> > I am new to "Apple family", only recently bought the above laptop.

> > previous laptop (which I still got - Sony VAIO Z1 1.6 GHz Centrino
> > with 1Gb RAM)

If it makes you feel any better I am in exactly the same position as you: I
went over to the Powerbook because of sluggish/flakey performance with my
Vaio and lack of support from Sony to cure it. I found that however bad the
Windows support became with certain companies ten minutes after the warranty
wears out, the Apple support is even worse (again, unless you pay through
the nose for it).

I then related (in a social setting) my story to the head of HiTech
investment at one of the major investment banks and he said that one of his
researchers who used a PC and had tried to change over to a Mac for the
specific purpose of doing a study on this had found exactly the same thing.

GOOD LUCK!!!

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B Collins - 23 Mar 2005 17:19 GMT

> > > I am new to "Apple family", only recently bought the above laptop.
> my
[quoted text clipped - 14 lines]
>
> GOOD LUCK!!!

It is not reasonable to expect unlimited technical support from any
company.

I have had only a couple of occasions to call Apple Tech Support. The
machine was still under warranty. Tech support was very helpful.

Beyond that, the Apple web site includes quite a variety of tech support
articles that you can open and read free of charge.

Be realistic in your expectations.

BTW, the OP did not ask a question about Apple Tech Support. He asked
the opinion of newsgroup readers about a specific technical matter.
There was no indication in his post that he had tried to call Apple tech
Support.

Bill

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John A. Hanson - 25 Mar 2005 04:34 GMT

> > > I am new to "Apple family", only recently bought the above laptop.
> my
[quoted text clipped - 14 lines]
>
> GOOD LUCK!!!

I'm convinced the whole reason for the existence of Windows PC's is to
sell support, maintenance, upgrades, training, anti-virus software,
etc., etc. It's big, big business. I'm convinced Macs are designed to
be the best computers around. So it's not really valid to compare
support.

JH

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Mac Forum / General / Portable Macs / March 2005

PowerBook G4 1 GHz performance