More of my sites

WinInfo Daily News
SuperSite for Windows
Windows IT Pro Magazine
Connected Home
Thurrott Dot Com
Windows Weekly at TWIT

About this site

For six years, the Internet Nexus served as my technology blog, but I've since started blogging at the SuperSite Blog instead. If you're looking for the blog, please head there. --Paul

Thursday, September 18, 2003

More benchmark fun: Low-end Pentium-M PC bests fastest PowerBook G4 on planet
When the PowerBook G4 17-inch first appeared (which is to say about two months after Apple said it would appear), I headed over to the local Apple Store to check out its performance. As with my iMac, I was hugely disappointed: Launching applications like Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0, which I have on both the PC and Mac, was painfully slow. This week, Bare Feats compared the very latest PowerBook G4 17-inch--which now runs at 1.33 GHz--with various other PowerBooks and a PC notebook based on the lowly 1.3 GHz Pentium M (the lowest speed supported by the "normal" Pentium M, it also runs at 1.4, 1.5, 1.6. and 1.7 GHz). Guess which machine won all the "pro creative" application benchmarks? Yep, the lowly Pentium M. So much for the megahertz myth: At just 1.3 MHz, the Pentium M has a slightly lower clockspeed than the PowerBook's 1.33 GHz. A comment in the review matches my experiences and thoughts about the PowerBook G4s: "I'm sorry to see Apple tout the PowerBook as a desktop replacement. It might be a replacement for the iMac or single cpu Power Mac for browzing the net and writing memos. But it can't keep up with the "big dogs" for really tough jobs."

[ Posted at 8:54 AM | Permalink ]