[Duo2400] Re: New G4 Powerbook vs the 2400

[Andrew W. Hill]

>Andrew W. Hill on 1/9/03 2:21 PM wrote:
>
>>>  As for something that ain't been invented, ten bucks says it 
>>>won't work with
>>>  anything less than OSX when it hit's the market.
>>
>>  Well, yeah... we're talking about the 12" TiBook here right?
>>
>What I meant was, if someone invented some cool new PC card doohickey, and
>actually wrote drivers so that you could use it on a Mac, they would
>probably only develop an OSX version. Hence rendering it unusable on a 2400.

Ah, The "stuff not made yet" applied to the TiBook.
When the 2400 came out, USB was available on PCs, and Firewire was 
heard of.  Ethernet and modems were common.  If we look at common 
things, or things on other platforms, we get builtin flash readers. 
That's basically it.  802.11 wasn't known of outside of real 
technical forums.  If we see that 802.11 wasnt heard of in 1997, but 
getting quite common now.  Imagine there's something that gets 
invented in five years time that we all want - we'll need to buy new 
computers.  Perhaps that isn't so bad for people with jobs, but I'm a 
student.  I budget about $150 a year for hardware purchases.


>
>  > I guess computing style comes into it.  I don't take AC adapters or
>>  external drives with me.  If you still have that smartmedia PC card
>>  I'd be interested in buying it from you.  I just got one at Circuit
>>  City that said it would work with all PCs, scanners and printers.
>>  Doesn;t work with my 2400 (works on a Dell PC though).
>>
>How strange that it doesn't work.

Yeah, I'm pretty pi... upset.  I'm gonna give it a whirl in a 
Titanium under X and see if its useful there.  If so I'll hang onto 
it in case I ever put OS X on this 2400.

>I'm actually hanging onto mine. Occasionally my kids use the PB1400 with the
>camera. However I think I bought this one at a Target Store here in Indy for
>$10, but that's been a while back...I think. Heck, I buy so much crap I
>don't remember where most of it comes from...

Yeah, the compact flash ones are pretty cheap, but the smartmedia 
ones seem slightly harder to find.  I think my grandparents paid like 
$40 for this four-in-one, and it was the only SM one in the store...

>Speaking of waiting, there is one thing that might make me wait a bit
>longer. I just read about a new 64-bit, PowerPC 970 processor that IBM is
>coming out with. Smaller and less power-hungry than the best G4 and runs at
>1.8GHz. I saw it in the February issue of MacAddict. I skimmed through the
>article Tuesday so I don't recall details (were the heck did I leave it
>laying) but I think they indicated that Apple hasn't publicly committed to
>it yet. But if/when they do, there's a good chance it will be in Macs before
>the end of the year. If so, it will make for one killer processor for
>PowerBooks (they mention a 1.2GHz model).

The 970 is a decent processor.  Its a scaled down version of IBM's 
POWER 4 workstation chip, so it has reasonable speeds and power 
consumption.  Currently all the 970 stuff is hearsay.  There was a 
rumor a few years ago that IBM would take over from Moto, which would 
make sort of a lot of sense, and then IBM released the POWER4, a chip 
of about the right speed for a Mac.  Then they announced the 970 and 
everyone thought that'd be better in a Mac (which it would).  There 
isn't anything even pointing towards actual evidence of this beyond 
webmonkeys wet dreams.

Which isnt to say it wont happen, but I'm not holding my breath

Peace
Aqua