[LilmaK]

Hey I currently own a cute iBOok G3/900/640/40G and I'm a photographer. This baby really crunches to give me some output when I'm working with images from my Fujifilm S7000 which are 6.3MP size. I can actually feel the struggle so I'm hoping to upgrade this year.
Now the MacBook Pro has really caught my eye and despite Adobe not developing new stuff til 2007, I'm thinking of switching to Aperture full time BUT...I don't want to get the first line of Macbooks at all. how long should I wait. I'd really love to get a 15inch but the second release of the macbooks most likely will be 12s and 17s since 15 has been released already...I'm guessing sometime over the summer these will be released...Question: should I just get the darn 15 inch now or wait til Christmas or later. I really need the horsepower to handle my images as I'm upgrading to 9.0 Megapixels some time this year as well.
Please help.

[ladyuser101]

I didn't wait. I bought the 15 inch PB two weeks ago. Be warned though, the PB aluminum is a high toned woman who takes lots of care and attention.
Adobe software is not the only factor. Hardware is a major point. Check the technical specs for each one.
I do a lot of graphics. First I make full size Tiffs and burn them to disk. These images run to 100MBs each. Then I make JPEGs burned to disks. Then I make slideshows.
Current PBs have both a 400 and 800 firewire on separate buses. The 800 firewire data transfer rivals the internal throughput while the 400 port can run the Adobe scratch pad. The pc card slot allows more firewire or usb2 slots. The dual layer Superdrive allows large storage burns. I love the screen and if I had to do it over again I would go for the 17 inch.
On the other hand, the MacBook has dual wireless if you need that. It has more graphics memory but real world tests (shall we say independent tests) are not available to see how much faster it can be. Apple is pushing the PCI express which has limits on what is available now. It has a faster system bus speed (667mhz) which always opens up the system but you will have to wait until software is optimized to use it.
It's that wait for Adobe and for Apple's own pro software that convinced me to buy now. The Apple store had some nice prices on the PB.
A real bargain are the free classes in Apple software at the Apple stores.

[maflynn]

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Be warned though, the PB aluminum is a high toned woman who takes lots of care and attention.

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Huh? /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif

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Adobe not developing new stuff til 2007, I'm thinking of switching to Aperture full time BUT...I don't want to get the first line of Macbooks

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Your right about both of those issues.
Photoshop will run under rosetta but s l o w but its not like you won't run.
The danger of having issues with a rev a machine is also real but lets not blow it out of perspective - If any apple will fix the computer.
One basic question I have - how long do you keep your computers for?
If you burn through them every couple of years then I'd say a 15" alu PB is the way to go. You get a laptop that's capable of running photoshop at a decent clip now and it can run aperture now in a couple of years you can say the same for the MBP.
If however you hold onto computers longer then that I'd suggest you take a harder look at the MBP, I just don't think your going to be satisfied with the performance of the PB long term, especially when working with aperture and photoshop. Both of them are pretty intensive applications. Aperture's weakness is the video card, the better the card the better the performance, so a more advanced modern video card is definitely going to help.
The down side of the PB - its old technology. I have a 15" pb that's around 4 years old (maybe older I forget). Its the same computer that you'll be being where as the new MBP laptops have new technology.
Not sure what the other poster was trying to convey about the laptop needing lots of care and attention. I my PB has been flawless and needed no special care. btw it was a rev a and while I did have an issue with white spots apple fixed the problem.
My Advice: If you can, wait until the Universal Binaries for Aperture have been released. By then you'll get a feel if there's any major problems with the hardware from the early adopters, you'll have aperture available to start using immediatly and while you will have to wait for CS3, CS2 will run under rosetta albeit slower.
One last thing buying applecare is crucial if you decide to purchase the MacBook Pro.
Good Luck
Mike

[macnuke]

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Be warned though, the PB aluminum is a high toned woman who takes lots of care and attention.

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err if i ever treated a woman like i treat my aluminum powerbook, she would be gone in 60 seconds or less.
my 'book has flown from the front seat to the dashboard, been dropped and generally not taken care of externally.
it's currently 1 year old, has multiple abrasions, contusions, lacerations along with a few interesting dents.
it has failed me exactly zero times.
I would never dream of treating a woman like my 'book.
except the insides that is... that's the truly healthy part. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif
besides, me dear ol' mum of 74 would kilt me dead if i ever treated anyone like that. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

[ladyuser101]

I bought two of the AlPBs in the last two months so I obviously prefer them. The Intel iMac has the same processor as the MacBook - just a bigger case, screen and power supply. It is also cheaper than the notebook so you may prefer that option.

[kleonard59]

My 15" PB 1.5, 1.25G ram, 64m graphics and 80g 4200rpm crawls when dealing with large photos from my Canon 20d. When shooting using the Canon EOS software, the lag during processing is annoying. Could it be due to my slow hard drive combined with the relatively ancient 167mhz bus?

[ladyuser101]

You wrote
>My 15" PB 1.5, 1.25G ram, 64m graphics and 80g 4200rpm crawls when dealing with large photos from my Canon 20d. When shooting using the Canon EOS software, the lag during processing is annoying. Could it be due to my slow hard drive combined with the relatively ancient 167mhz bus?
I'm more of a Thinkpad user (1.3GHz Pentium M, 2GB RAM, 266MHz, 60GB 7200 HD, 32MB vRAM) than a Powerbook user but my answer would be yes and yes. Faster hard drives and faster buses do help. However, you could probably overcome some of the bottleneck with an external firewire drive since you have a great CPU.
The problem comes with the PB writing back to itself with the single hard drive. I would let the internal hard drive run the OS and apps while the external took the writing. The computer uses about 10 to 20 percent of the resources for overhead (commands, internal instructions for addressing) so the slower drive is not that much of a factor. With the amount of RAM you have, the Apple OS seems to be pretty efficient (from what little I've seen) at managing RAM swap.
To keep things small and transportable an external 2.5 inch firewire drive like the Hitachi 60GB 7200RPM will handle up to a 50MB/s (big B) transfer since it runs at 400Mb/s (little b). The 1.5GHz CPU is up to that while running the OS. The RAM helps. Maxtor makes great firewire/usb2 3.5 inch drives if you don't mind the larger size.
I hate to recommend spending money or creating a solution with equipment you don't have but I have had good success with the external hard drive on graphics. Borrow one to give it a try if possible. That's cheaper than buying a new Powerbook. HTH

[mshuang]

With 1.25 GB of RAM, most of the lag you are experiencing is probably not memory related lag. You're probably being bound by other factors such as CPU, Hard drive, or even video card.
The G4 architecture is over 4 years old now, even if it's faster than when it was released, even a low end G5 is still much, much faster.