iBook users: need your advice

panocho

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A PC user for quite a long time, I'm somehow switching to Mac. "Somehow" because circumstances make that: 1st I will continue using PCs quite often and 2nd I'm entering Mac with a rather old model. And this is where your contribution is needed:

Hopefully, I will soon have an iBook G4 12" (a real portable laptop, not like the one I'm using right now, which kills my back when carrying it!). I'm getting it second hand and, as a first time Mac user, I obviously have a few doubts on which model to get. I've been doing my research and come to the conclusion that it is the G4 that I want (read rather: I can afford...;)). The thing is, which processor speed? Here is where I have the doubts I haven't been able to solve. Those of you who have or had a G4, would you say that an 800 MHz processor would be ok or should I expend the extra money and go for a 1,07 GHz or 1,33 Ghz?

As far as photography is concerned, I'm going to be using it to BASIC edition of 10 MP RAW images. The software, probably Nikon view 5.1, Nikon capture 3.0, and/or perhaps Photoshop Elements (version?). Outside photography, no other uses worry me, unless the iBook would have problems playing DVDs or movies (.avi extensions and the like), which I will be doing as well.

I don't need the Mac to be really fast; I just don't want to have to wait minutes before having a picture saved to JPG from its RAW original. The price difference between under and over 1 GHz is considerable, and my worries are that I might not notice the difference having expent the extra money, or the other way round, save money but have a significantly slower machine.

I don't mention RAM because that one is easily upgraded. Either way, I would try to go for at least 640 MB, 1 GB preferably.

Oh! If that matters, it will likely run Tiger, maybe Leopard.

Thanks for your patience and for your contributions! they are much appreciated!
 
I would try to go for a little bit more RAM, and your cpu shouldn't bottleneck. I'm using a MacBook 1.8GHz and my whole system bottlenecks pretty hard at 1gig of ram when using photoshop or any other larger program. I think the G4's were starting to use the larger front side bus, but I would still get the fastest CPU you can afford. Just keep in mind that RAM is very important on these systems.

Go to apple's website and look into their financing, you can get a basic MacBook like mine for under a grand and pay about $25 a month for it, and then upgrade the RAM for pretty cheap.
 
thanks for the comment, but I don't plan financing and my budget is far too limited to consider buying a newer model.

as for your recommendations, I do intend to get as much RAM as possible, that to me is clear. My problem is whether a faster G4 processor is really worth the extra money. Obviously, a 1.33 GHz has to be faster than a 800 MHz but, will it be a difference I'll REALLY notice?

The "cheap" in "a cheap mac laptop" is what determines my decission the most. It would be silly for my part to expend more than $100 extra for a 1.33 GHz instead of a 800 MHz if with the same RAM (say 1 GB) they perform similarly. For in that case, I would definitely put more extra $$ and get a newer model. Now, if the difference between the two (and the intermediate ones) is significantly noticeable, then I'll pay the extra.

By the way, right now I'm working with a P4 2,66 GHz, 512 MB RAM and although somehow slow I can't complain. And I don't mean to compare; just giving more info.
 

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