Ableton Forum

My girlfriend just got a 2ghz core 2 duo macbook with one gig of ram.
Now, I knew they were good, but holy cow.... I loaded up a set that my 1.67 G4 (1.5 gigs of ram) was choking on... up to 84 percent in the live performance bar. Hers played it without missing a beat, maxing out at 16 percent!
Is this normal? Is my powerbook underperforming... or should i just give up and get a macbook? Hell, i dont even mind the small screen! Plus the wireless is way better!
Seems like really good value too... I feel a bit sickened cos i only bought my power book just over a year ago, before the intel stuff came out and now it seems totally redundant. Is a 17 inch powerbook still worth somthing?

Yes go for a macbook.

If I get a display, and hook my laptop up to it, will the display just show what i would usually see on my laptop, only bigger? The reason i ask is that it would be nice to have the laptop acting as a 2nd smaller screen for plug ins or for my mix software, while live is in the main display on its own? Is this possible?
thanks

You know, if she really loves you...

your right. I demand a straight swap.

If you hook up an external display, you'll have two screens then. The Macbook can drive two video displays at once.

and yes you can still get cash for your powerbook. I see them selling on craigslist all the time for good cash.

In the meantime, can my powerbook drive 2 screens at once? (Ill probly get the screen before the macbook.... )
I should really know the answer to this question.

I finally broke down and got a macbook after the headache of dealing with a PC for years. After the first day I called my friend and asked "What's the catch?", and said "It cannot be this easy". I was wrong. It was that easy.

So now all is bliss.

Sorry to say this, but by continuing to sell Powerbooks for full price right up to the Intel switch, Apple were scamming people.

The powerbooks were really sub par performance wise already two years ago, and much more expensive than any PC. And that same PC smoked them when it came to performance. That is what people get for trusting Apples marketing.

Now, the new Macbooks are very good and priced decently competitive against any PC laptop.

Yeah, just sell your computer on eBay or Craigslist or something. If it's only a year old, you can easily upgrade to a Macbook, and have enough cash left over for some extra RAM or something.

I'm trying to get my friend to do this, but he's too damn stubborn. The screen is smaller, but the computer is much more powerful.

Michael-SW wrote:Sorry to say this, but by continuing to sell Powerbooks for full price right up to the Intel switch, Apple were scamming people.

Even if they dropped the price of Powerbooks considerably long before they switched to Intel chips, consumers would still complain that "Appl€ was just trying to offload their old crap and force people to upgrade."

Michael-SW wrote: Sorry to say this, but by continuing to sell Powerbooks for full price right up to the Intel switch, Apple were scamming people.

That's the truth, no two ways about it!


As for the topic, same happened to me recently on the PC side. GF got a new Vaio laptop, Core2 with 2gigs of ram...twice my specs for half the price!

Michael-SW wrote:Sorry to say this, but by continuing to sell Powerbooks for full price right up to the Intel switch, Apple were scamming people.

The powerbooks were really sub par performance wise already two years ago, and much more expensive than any PC. And that same PC smoked them when it came to performance. That is what people get for trusting Apples marketing.

Now, the new Macbooks are very good and priced decently competitive against any PC laptop.

people can do their own investigating about products, if they don't investigate before they pay that much money then I wouldn't blame the store I'd blame the uneducated customer.
which i include myself in the uneducated customer because I bought a 17' powerbook like a year ago when they were practically bottom of the performance pile. but I don't blame apple cause I could have easily got online and researched.

to be fair, i did do my research, and i knew the intel chips were coming in....
But at the time it would have been at least 2 months precious music making time wasted by waiting, plus no one was sure how they would work out.... or how long it would take before all my software would work properly with em. Also, the general consenis was "never buy 1st generation apple stuff", so i thought id go with the safe bet. I think im gunna hold on to my powerbook though... It has a certain charm (and a hugt screen!) and will come in handy as a backup computer for live gigs.

jesso wrote:In the meantime, can my powerbook drive 2 screens at once? (Ill probly get the screen before the macbook.... )
I should really know the answer to this question.

yes, it can.