On 10/28/03 11:17 AM, "Lincoln Dunn" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> MacDuff: > > Thanks for the specs. Here's the $20,000 question, however: > > How does it "feel" to work on a 450 with Panther? > > Reason I'm asking is, I hope to buy a G4/400-450 in the next little while to > satiate my lust for a G5 until rev. B, and I would like to find out > real-world use experiences. After using OSX at work for the last 18 months, > I was dying to use it at home on my beige G3 where it works.....sluggishly. Well, there's a big difference between a G3/266 (or whatever) with a PCI graphic Quartz Extreme incompatible graphics system and an Altivec pumpin', AGP packin' Sawtooth. But, I completely understand where you're coming from. **Bear in mind that I bought an ATI Radeon 9000 Pro GPU, which takes advantage of Quartz Extreme** With Jag, the system felt like it was juuuust keeping up. Menus were responsive. Finder list views and Get Info calculations were surprisingly quick. File search was decent. Dock responsiveness to popping up Docked drives and folders (click-holding for Apple Menu-like folder drilling; NOT just a single-click and display in desktop routine) was okay. But, where it had a tendency to fall flat on its face was window resizing! ESPECIALLY the iApps! Apple should be ashamed of themselves for shipping such bloated code. Not only because they were still selling G3 processor iBooks until last week, but even redraws on a G5 are not absolutely lagless! Anyway, beyond the good improvement in app launching that I reported in my tests, Panther makes the things that were decently responsive pretty damned snappy. And, the Dock issue I mentioned has improved a lot. Opening Finder Windows is bloody fast. For web related activities, simple office stuff to most games, it's working pretty well. iTunes is responsive. iPhoto is getting there. And, most wonderfully, iMovie 3.0.3 is feels like it has most of its iMovie 2 spring in its step again. You don't have to pack a lunch just to render a title. HALLELUIAH! My G4/450 "feels" smooth and composed, now. And, I too have felt the heat subside a bit to try to push a G5 out of my wallet until later. :-) Some issues regarding the stock Sawtooth video card. You surely know that they shipped with an ATI Rage 128 Pro. It cannot handle Quartz Extreme. Two months ago, I bought an ATI Radeon 9000 Pro card (64MB Vram). I honestly found it difficult to detect a huge difference in system response -- aside from games, of course. Even with the Radeon card, Jag still felt tenuous. I got little wavy artifacts when scrolling and such, like holding down the spacebar at my dearest http://macsurfer.com/ site. With Panther, QE feels like all its cylinders are firing and -- again -- the word that comes to mind is "smooth". If you're doing knock-down, drag-out Photoshop or After Effects, I'm sure your expectations will not be high, given the processor speed and FSB. And, I can't offer any opinion on this. I haven't migrated my music software, plugins and audio drivers to OS X, yet. So, I'm still booting into OS 9 for music production. So, there ya go: $20,000 worth of subjective opinion! YMMV! ;) MacDuff PS: I bought the Radeon card at a Toronto Mac dealer for REALLY REALLY cheap! $190.00! :-O http://www.clickonmacs.com/interface.htm These are indeed AGP versions; NOT the cheaper PCI ones. At this price, I say GET ONE -- and at least 512MB RAM. PSS: Some of you out there might know of this, but if you have folders and drives Docked, click-holding on them will pop them UP just like the OS 9 Apple Menu would pop them OUT, allowing you to burrow into your folders, menu-style. Unfortunately, Apple chose to impose a pause before the Dock responds in order to give the user the chance to grab the Docked item and UNDOCK IT. I think this was a bad idea, and they should have made the Dock as responsive as possible to the click-hold-popup and instead use a modifier key to tell the System you were undocking (or "poofing") an item. If you Control-Click on a Docked folder or drive, however -- or rght-click with a two button mouse-- the Dock comes up as fast as it can. The first time might be a bit slow, as it caches the contents. Subsequent attempts result in a pretty fast, almost instantaneous response. PSSS: Expose is the most functional OS X exclusive feature, EVER... Er... IMHO, of course. PSSSS: Odd in Panther that I cannot seem to hide my external Firewire drive from my Desktop. I have the prefs set the way the should be -- and my two internal drives are hidden and CDs appear on the drive as desired. But, the external Firewire drive is there, STARING me in the face. Wasn't like that in Jag... *grumbles incoherently* -- Mac Canada is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... 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