PowerBook "power"... or lack thereof

[Chris Olson]

Has anybody done any benchmarks on different powerbook models to see 
what they're capable of?

Background info:
1.25 Ghz G4 AlBook w/1.0 GB RAM.
I'm working with ESRI shapefiles in ArcExplorer.  Polygon files seem to 
render pretty quickly, however, point data files are very slow.  Some 
of the point files I'm working with have ~148,000 data points within a 
few minutes of latitude/longitude.  It'll take the PowerBook up to 30 
seconds to render a file, and every time you do a query on an 
underlying layer, it has to re-render the map, which is time consuming 
and quite slow.

Taking the same project to my single processor 1.25 Ghz G4 Power Mac 
(1.0 GB 333 Mhz DDR SDRAM)  is a dramatic difference.  The same file 
that takes 30 seconds on the PowerBook takes less than 5 seconds on the 
Power Mac.  Video RAM is the same - 64 MB, although the Power Mac has 
an ATI Radeon 9000 and the PB has an ATI Radeon 9600 mobility.  I don't 
think it's a video issue - I believe it's a difference in processor 
power.

Any reason for this?  Anybody else work with ArcExplorer on a 
PowerBook?  I'd be happy to zip up and send a dataset and project file 
for somebody with experience to try for curiosity's sake.
--
Chris