Apple

Hopefully there will be a reduction in pointless visuals inorder to support mobile devices.

Or an enhancement in hardware rendering.

There's no reason that widgets should slow Flash down on as badly as they do even a rudimentary GPU - even embedded platforms like the iPhone and the PSP's GU are perfectly capable of handling some transparent overlays, and they should only need to be rendered once.
The problem is that in order to support different browsers Flash needs to run in a control context that varies greatly, which makes it really hard to use the GPU properly when there's no consistent way to get a GL/video API of choice context. That's also why the browser has a huge effect on Flash performance - if you don't get what I mean try to grab a Windows box and run Flash in IE8 and then Firefox. Prepare to be amazed.

Anyway as far as the PowerBook goes I'm going to go against the consensus here and say it's not a great idea - Mac OS X will soon stop supporting these systems, and it's really hard to avoid updating OSX (I had a friend swear he'd hang on to Tiger forever on his G5... that lasted about 4 months until he needed a newer version of some app!). The only alternative OSes that would run on one would be Linux or some kind of *BSD - and at that point why not just get some used x86 kit of similar quality, like a used ThinkPad?

If you especially love the formfactor, case, or looks (and I must admit - they are a pretty solid machine!) it becomes more of a toss-up though...

shyouko wrote: The most important thing for PPC Mac to run a web browser: Skip Flash and load it only when you have to.

1. Firefox -> FlashBlock
2. Safari -> ClickToFlash

Gosh, even my Intel Mac needs this kind of treatment... Flash sucks.

Agreed, It will be great for just about everything except flash! I still use my 1Ghz G4 TiBook with 768mb ram daily and it goes great guns!

kramlq wrote: I think its only going to get worse. Assembly isn't really considered important enough to teach anymore, and universities often teach virtual machine based languages like Java from day one of the course now. So the correlation between code written and what happens at lower levels is not something future programmers are very aware of anymore.

That requires time in school, which will translate into higher salaries. Given that most end-users seem to expect terrible performance and either be OK with it or blame themselves (I think I need to get a new machine ... mine is two years old and it's getting a little slow running the Internet. Also I think I need to upgrade my DSL - it's only 7Mbps and it's slow... ) why would you, as a software company, want to bother paying money for someone who really knows what they're doing for "consumer" stuff. Perhaps for professional apps, I suppose.

The state of computers nowadays is an industrialist's daydream, with many users thinking "it doesn't work right... it must be my fault"

I seem to be channeling Hamei. Or Dogbert.

I have a thinkpad x40... similar form factor. Only problem is, the battery is 5 years old now so a charge only lasts for 2 hours or so (having to carry around a power brick kind of puts a snag in the whole 2.5 pound laptop thing). I suppose I could hackintosh it if I wanted...


I almost got one of the 12" G4's but couldn't find one at a decent price at the time. If you can get a good deal on one (say, <$300) I say go for it.

although, if you need such a small computer to carry around everywhere you go, maybe you should reconsider your life.

ajerimez wrote: I have a 12" iBook G4 1.33GHz with 1.5GB RAM that I use in the classroom and at the bedside.

Electronic pillow book ? Kewl

hamei wrote:

ajerimez wrote: I have a 12" iBook G4 1.33GHz with 1.5GB RAM that I use in the classroom and at the bedside.

Electronic pillow book ? Kewl

Heh, yeah, I guess you could call it my PillowBook G4

Have you ever really really wanted to [xxxxx] but for [yyyyy] reason you just couldn't years ago? Now you can but it might not be reasonable. Will you go for it? Will you not?

Yeah I guess it's emotional too...

I got rid of my PPC equipment in preperation for moving. I had a PMG4 400MHz Sawtooth that I overclocked to 533MHz with a 133MHz FSB using a 450MHz CPU. I also had a 1.25GHz eMac and a 2005 2.0GHz DC PMG5 with 6GB of ram. I loved that G5. Couldn't care less about the G4 equipment though, they were just play machines. The 1.5GHz PowerBook should be still plenty powerful for web surfing which is what notebooks are meant for these days, so if its cheap enough, then yeah its not a bad idea.