Are Powebooks good for multitasking?

[cjc343]

I multitask on my pb:

I have Firefox, Safari, Adium, Mail, iTunes, Terminal, Excel, SubEthaEdit, Text Edit, Azureus, and Preview running right now, and after I've had it up for a few more days I'll probably also have iPhoto, Network Utility, Disk Utility, Snak (IRC), Console, Dictionary, Photoshop, and a few other things running.

In the background, there's an FTP server, Apache 2, No-IP update Daemon, and a few other things I've probably forgotten about.

Firefox has 14 extensions installed, and opens at least 10 tabs on startup usually, and often has many more open... Safari usually has 0-5 windows open with usually about 3 tabs to 10 tabs each, iTunes is generally playing music, Terminal isn't doing much right now, but a minute ago I was compiling something...


Everything runs smoothly for me. I have a 1.25 GHz Processor and 1.25 GB RAM and a 80GB drive (I think it's 5200 RPM...) along with an external 160 GB Firewire drive.

I can watch movies in VLC off of either drive without the movie skipping while all this is running.

In other words - I have no problems multi-tasking on my PB.

 

[Sic]

i bought 2Gb RAM for a kinda similar reason to this. i tend to have quite a multitasking habit with my computing. at any one time i can have - up to 10 windows in camino, proteus, itunes, dreamweaver 8, vlc, (watching something on my other monitor) photoshop (processing RAW photos), thunderbird, iCal, preview and 2 or 3 finder windows.

was finding that my 1.33Ghz 768mb PB wasnt really dealing with all that very well...so i upgraded to the one in my sig. hopefully that'll be much smoother...it's still not arrived yet

 

[kensuf]

Add memory and life is well. I use an older tibook at work daily, have firefox, ichat, mail, x11, and a few other apps open at any given moment with no problems.

 

[CanadaRAM]

Don't know what the fixation on 2 seconds is about, but there's another factor. My 2.4 GHz 2 Gb RAM Windows XP machine will display an application on screen almost instantly... but it takes a MUCH longer period of disk-thrashing before you can actually use the app.

The desktop takes a good 5 minutes before all the startup operations are complete. Outlook will take 2 - 3 minutes before it starts responding to the mouse. (even tho' it appeared 'instantly') Clicking and trying to use something that is apparently ready but not actually ready is a good way to crash the app or the machine.

 

[efoto]

I have a 12" PB maxed at 1.25GB of RAM and it functions fine as a multitasker. I always have Adium open for chat, Safari for web usually with at least 5 tabs, either Mail.app or Entourage (if at work) for mail, and often PSCS2 in there as well. I work most commonly with 8-10MB RAW images in PS, but occasionally I do edit a 40-50MB tif file. I can have two of those tif.s open and function fine, but the third (with all the other stuff mentioned starts to bog a bit). I usually work on 6-8 RAW images at once with no problem either.

Instant-access is a bit much to ask, I don't know of a PC computer, laptop or otherwise, that does that. 2 seconds is quite acceptable. Even on a work PowerMac with 8GB of RAM it takes a little bit to launch stuff, especially when you click a ton of stuff at once....so maybe redefining what is 'normal' would help out a bit.

 

[Mr Skills]

There is a fundamental difference between PCs and Macs which you may not be aware of, which makes a big difference here.

In Windows, when you press the 'X' to close a window, it closes the whole application. When you you click the app's icon again, it reloads the app from scratch.

In OSX, when you close the last window, almost all apps (except a few very small ones) remain open until you actually quit them. So once you have opened the app, it remains open - you do not need to worry about the 2 second loading time!

I know to a windows user this will sound very scary - after all, keeping that many apps open would make Windows get pretty flakey - but there are virtually no overheads from this at all. I run extremely heavy-duty audio applications for my work, and I will always have itunes, a couple of browsers, Word and various audio utilities running in the background. Never any problems.

OSX is fantastic at multitasking - and if one app crashes, the Force Quit (equivalent of End Task in Windows) is quick, painless and works every time. The crash will not 'spread' to the other apps that are open, you will not have to keep fruitlessly stabbing at a reappearing 'end task' button, and you will not have to reboot - just reload the program.

 

[Lacero]

You can leave apps open in OSX so there's no need to quit and open apps constantly, like I have to do in Windows. This whole fascination with bouncing icons in the Dock is a PC user thing?

 

[hulugu]

My uses include surfing the internet (firefox), downloading music (limewire), AIM, iMovie, Word document, bittorent, and iTunes.

Can the PB with 1gb of ram handle having all of those programs running at the same time and when I switch back and forth, there is absolutely no lag at all?

EDIT: Somehow i was hoping that a powerbook would allow me to open up programs instantly, but i guess that isn't possible?

I don't think you can get instant programs on any OS, it takes time for everything to be loaded from the hard-drive into system memory. Windows cheats by showing splash-screens almost instantly, but it takes time for the entire application to actually load.

Two seconds is a short time to wait, and if you're really militant about the time you can set specific apps to load on start-up, so once the machine is on several applications will be running. And, since OSX multitasks so well you really can leave many applications running without taking a significant performance hit.

I have a 550mhz TiBook with 768MB of RAM and I typically have at least 5 applications running.

 

[Mord]

that 2 second wait is about the same as a pc, it's just on a pc it'll show you what is happening and you'll have to wait 2 seconds or so before the app is usable, the same thing applys to web site loading times, apps do tend to take a very small amount longer to load on a mac because of the RISC architecture, the cpu core is simple and fast whereas the code is complex therefor needs more space, thats why intel OS X apps are generally smaller than ppc OS X apps.

 

[raremage]

How can I get it so it opens up programs faster?

Wouldn't it be mundane and monotonous to sit there and watch an icon bounce and then 2 seconds later you can use it? That'd be kinda frustrating ...

You're kidding, right? What programs precisely are you opening 'instantly' on your Dell that take significantly longer to open on a PB?

Word? Not likely.
Excel? Doubtful
Windows Messenger? Definitely not.
World of Warcraft? Also doubtful.

Examples would be dandy, because I think you're setting an unreasonable expectation, one that you can't meet with any system.

 

[nutmac]

Although Intel-based notebook running on Windows XP will provide you with greater raw power, Mac OS X is a far superior multitasking operating system. I rarely experience extreme slow down with many programs running, something I cannot say for my ThinkPad on Windows when cranking heavy activities.

That said, if you are so concerned with raw performance, why not just wait for Intel-based PowerBook and get best of the both worlds?

 

[pionata]

Well I'm a windows user that wants to buy a pb.... so I went to the apple store yesterday to check out the updated powerbook. The one on display had 512mb ram. I tested it out and opened a lot of apps at once, I thought it was pretty slow at opening the programs since the icon flashes and bounces on the dock for about 2 seconds and then opens up..

Is this normal? Is the PB excellent for multitasking, such as using the internet, switching back and forth between programs, etc?

Is the PB faster than an intel notebook such as Dell at multitasking or is it the same?

thank you for all your advice since i've never used macs for more than 5 minutes before

I dont think it is a good time to buy a powerbook.

1) Many users have screens and other problems
2) New powerbook on the horizon, possibly 2 or 3 times faster. (see 3) )
3) The january MWSF show, something will probably get released or announced then, and you might want that instead.

Ive been waiting for a while also, those are quite expensive, and if you compare the speed of the powerbook with the speed of the powermac for the same price, something is realy WRONG (1.67ghz G4 --- 4ghz G5). And no monitor (specialy faultly ones lol) can justify such a speed difference for the same $.

 

[ibook30]

A very unscientific test - but a friend recently got a new Dell lap top. It's a pro machine, and has twice the ram as my ibook - twice the hard drive, etc. etc.

We sat next to each other and launched app after app. My two year old ibook beat him 2 out of 3 times !

 

[ozone]

I don't know what kind of Dell you're running where programs consistently open in less than 2 seconds. My older desktop Dells were fast, granted, but for me, it's not the program launch that frustrates me, but the time for a computer to start up or for it to go into or out of standby/hibernate.

I started my wife's 3 year old model TiBook running a measly 800 MHz and only 512 MB of SDRAM the other day... except this was the first time I paid attention to it since she installed Tiger. From power on to FULL usability took less than 45 seconds! Very impressive. No Windows laptop I've owned even comes close: at least 90 seconds to 2 minutes.

... and I gotta ask... 2 seconds? You're worried about TWO seconds?

 

[risc]

Can someone please explain to me what the launch time of an application has to do with multitasking? Of course any OS X box is going to be good at multitasking it's a UNIX like OS what do you expect? If you can't handle the time it takes for an app to load buy a faster hard drive.

 

[jdechko]

Also remember that on Windows machines with newer versions of Office installed, Microsoft likes to cheat by preloading some of the office files when the computer first starts, while Mac OS X has to load all of the files.

 

[bigandy]

regarding the opening of apps, 2 seconds is far faster than most windows apps.

the time it takes to appear on screen is the ACTUAL load time, and it's ready to use, something that apple and 3rd party developers focus on.

however, look at many windows apps, and the splash screen will sit there for a second or two, then the window will start to draw. how long before it's usable? perfect example - outlook. it's perhaps the worst programme ever written in terms of loading quickly. once it's got a big PST file behind it you're screwed - it loads, the window draws, then it loads the mail file. which can take a minute after the app's loaded before it's usable.

apple apps only show on screen when they're ready to use.

that's great.

 

[Mord]

i just timed it and safari took 1.28 seconds to launch on my 600MHz G3 ibook with 640MB ram and 5400rpm 80GB HD while running 7 apps in the backround

 

[BlizzardWolf]

I don't know what kind of Dell you're running where programs consistently open in less than 2 seconds. My older desktop Dells were fast, granted, but for me, it's not the program launch that frustrates me, but the time for a computer to start up or for it to go into or out of standby/hibernate.

I started my wife's 3 year old model TiBook running a measly 800 MHz and only 512 MB of SDRAM the other day... except this was the first time I paid attention to it since she installed Tiger. From power on to FULL usability took less than 45 seconds! Very impressive. No Windows laptop I've owned even comes close: at least 90 seconds to 2 minutes.

... and I gotta ask... 2 seconds? You're worried about TWO seconds?

45 seconds is pretty slow compared to my 2 year old Dell PC. I timed it today and it took around 28 seconds to boot from startup and finish loading.

Opening up MS Word takes less than 1 second and so does excel and powerpoint, and my PC only has 256mb RAM.

It seems like powerbooks are just more stable but PCs are faster and can handle more programs.

 

[nutmac]

This is getting ridiculous. As others have pointed out, launch time depends on many factors, including (but not limited to) disk speed, size of the applications itself, efficiency of file I/O, differences in how application initializes itself, available physical memory, cache implementation, and so on. Multitasking is how well a system handles multiple concurrent processes and threads, as well as how well shared resources get used.

 

[hulugu]

45 seconds is pretty slow compared to my 2 year old Dell PC. I timed it today and it took around 28 seconds to boot from startup and finish loading.

Opening up MS Word takes less than 1 second and so does excel and powerpoint, and my PC only has 256mb RAM.

It seems like powerbooks are just more stable but PCs are faster and can handle more programs.

That's not a fair test, your using Windows and MS Office. MS Office loads much of its processes as the system boots. Also, RAM doesn't affect boot-up time, but hard-drive. Also, your computer has a year on the previous posters computer.
I'm surprised your PC boots that fast, but okay you get 17 seconds
woopdedoo. What's the time from sleep to usability?
Powerbooks are very good multitasking machines, fast and powerful and capable of running multiple programs at once, including very powerful pro-programs. Really, it's a matter of what kind of work you want to do, how you deal with the OS, and how reliable the system and OS are. It can also be a consideration of security. Again, what do you want to do with your computer? Anything else is really just comparing dick size.

 

[Mord]

office is faster in virtual pc than it is native to OS X, now that says something, lets compare equal apps, like firefox mac Vs firefox pc, or PS mac Vs PS pc

 

[MRU]

I just did a scientific test.

With photoshop open on both my Powerbook. Powermac and PC I applied a set of actions to an 10x8 photo. Whilst the machines were processing and applying filters etc.. I asked each computer to make me a peanut butter sandwich.

Surprisingly none of the computers managed to complete the test, in fact I'm still waiting for my sandwich

So I'm guessing that full multitaksing is still not possible regardless of pc, pb, or mac....


----- In all seriousness I never had a problem multitaksing with my PB. Memory does make a huge difference. With Photoshop CS2 my PB opens the app quicker than my Dell P4 3ghz, both with similar size memory (1.5 v 1.25)

 

[mkrishnan]

Can someone please explain to me what the launch time of an application has to do with multitasking? Of course any OS X box is going to be good at multitasking it's a UNIX like OS what do you expect? If you can't handle the time it takes for an app to load buy a faster hard drive.

This has been a very, very restrained conversation in that this point hasn't been pressed harder and earlier.

If you're multi-tasking, usually, you're doing multiple things on multiple programs. What programs you're using shouldn't really be that unpredictable. Leave them running. Even in Windows, if you're multitasking by launching and quitting programs all day...how is that productive? Even if they are insanely fast at launching, you still have to reopen the files you were working on, whereas, if you just left them running and switched apps, they would all still be there.

 

[pubwvj]

Is the PB excellent for multitasking, such as using the internet, switching back and forth between programs, etc?

Yes, the PowerBooks are excellent for multitasking. I generally have a dozen or two applications open including Illustrator, Photoshop, GraphicConverter, Mail, Safari, Fetch, iCal, AddressBook, Weatherman, ActivityMonitor, iTunes, JNotes, PandoCalendar, SystemPreferences, HyperEdit, Calculator, HPScanner, BBEdit (what is currently open on my machine).

I'm running all of that on a lowly PowerBook Pismo G3 500MHz under Panther 10.3.9. Having plenty of (?1GB) and at least 2GB of free hard disk space helps. I have run with as little as 512MB RAM (a chip went south on one card) and 500MBHD - this tends to cause more disk churning as applications get switched in and out of memory.

If you have a more modern PowerBook then it will be a lot faster. The point is even this older machine handles all of that fine so a newer machine will do even better.