Bidding adieu to Pentium M

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No, it's not.

At least it's not worth the $1,500.00 Apple is asking for it. The baseline model ($1499) has a 1.5 GHz G4, a 12.1-inch screen, 512 MB of 333 MHz memory, a Geforce Go FX5200 with 64 MB of dedicated 400 MHz DDR memory, a DVD+/-R/RW drive, an 80 GB hard drive and both bluetooth and wifi.

A $1,500 Dell Inspiron 9300 has a 1.86 GHz Pentium M, it has a 17-inch screen, 512 MB of 533 MHz memory, an ATI Radeon X300 with 128 MB of dedicated 400 MHz memory, a DVD+/-R/RW drive, a 100 GB hard drive and both wifi and bluetooth wireless. Okay, okay, okay... the Dell came out to be $1,500 while the Mac came out to be $1,499. But. I'd fork over the extra dollar for the added performance of the Dell.

There are two things PowerBooks have "over" PC laptops, but these two miniscule features are hardly significant enough to, A.) Catapult the PowerBook ahead of any PC equivalents, or B.) Warrant a $2,500 pricetag. Firewire 800 isn't used by much today, and it's not reverse compatible with standard Firewire 400 ports. Gigabit ethernet is another feature vault from Apple, the unsuspecting reader might not know that in order to take advantage of gigabit ethernet's faster transfer speeds, you need Category 6 ethernet cabling, and a gigabit access point. The advantage of HAVING gigabit ethernet to LAN is rendered useless when someone with a 10/100 connection connects to the gigabit network.

High end PowerBooks don't compare either, they're using G4 "processors." You'd have better luck jamming a square of cardboard into the ZIF socket (and better speed, too). The GHz to GHz argument isn't even valid here, a Pentium M would kill an equally clocked G4. G4's have a 167 MHz front side bus, the Pentium M has a 400-533 MHz front side bus. A 1.42 GHz G4 would have it's ass handed to it by a 1.4 GHz Pentium M. The fastest G4 out there is slower than the slowest Pentium M option on Dell.com. The sad part is, that's not a joke.

Even the high-end PowerBooks don't compare. For $2,500, the fastest PowerBook screams along at 1.67 GHz, or roughly the same speed as a frozen turtle going uphill. It also sports a 17-inch screen powered by a Radeon 9700 with 128 MB of DDR memory, gigabit ethernet, bluetooth wireless and wifi, a DVD+/-R/RW drive, a 120 GB hard drive and 512 MB of 333 MHz DDR memory (still). It is...um... it is pretty though...

A Dell at the same price would kill that thing that some people have the nerve to call a laptop. For $2,350 ($149 CHEAPER than the PowerBook), I can get a 2.13 GHz Pentium M, 2 GIGABYTES of 533 MHz DDR2 memory, a 100 GB hard drive, a 17-inch screen powered by a Geforce Go 6800 with 128 MB of memory, bluetooth wireless and wifi (supporting 802.11a standards). It's pretty too.

The only Macs that aren't downright wastes of money are the iMacs and the PowerMacs. The Mac Mini, the PowerBooks and the iBooks are all overpriced pieces of crap.

-Pikl

Posted by: A_Pickle   Posted on: 12/23/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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