Are Powebooks good for multitasking?

[godbout]

I am surprised that nobody has mentioned the fact that you only have to boot an application once in a blue moon! I can't even remember the last time that I shut down my PB... it sleeps alot but VERY rarely (OS upgrades) do I have to shut it down completely. So all my applications are open all the time... I could list off the 10 or so that NEVER close... but I am sure by now you have seen that us mac users, powered with expose and a unix based OS have arguably the best multitasking machines there are. I will say this though... it takes some time coming from a World of Windows to to understand what multitasking truely is... not just 20 progs running at the same time... but being able to fluidly move between them to get a job done faster... I have tried this on a windows machine... it does not even come close

 

[opak]

I use a 1.5Ghz powerbook with 1Gb RAM. It works fine unless by multi-tasking you mean Photoshop + Illustrator + Maya + Poser.. or something crazy like that. Smoke will undoubtly come out of the rear! When in photoshop, it works fine when the file is less than 250MB, any bigger and it will start lagging.

 

[DaftUnion]

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 ...

Why is this one or two seconds so important? You have to realize that most programs will open up within a second or so like iTunes or Safari...but it all comes down to if you use anything like iMovie or a comparable movie editing program on windows...or any of the adobe programs as a prime example that things ARE going to take some seconds to load...windows or osx.

The primary point of using any operating system should be to work with the programs you have, and less of how long it takes to load them...if it was like 30 seconds or a minute, I could see your point, but are these fractions of a second that important?

 

[kilimanjaro]

This Guy's Wasting Everyones Time

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.

I was waiting for someone to make this comment.. Is this guy for real??

wanted a laptop to pull up umpteem apps at the same time, with no lag or delay.. As a Creative Professional, these are unreasonable demands for a laptop..

By no means am I Window's hater.. but what Dell is doing all this for him? Isn't it true that Dell makes laptops too?? And they are pretty cheap.. I heard..
They should multi-task just fine..
Wonder why he wants a Mac anyway..

 

[tuartboy]

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

1) Many users have screens and other problems

Yeah, my powerbook came with a screen and man, I AM PISSED!!!

 

[generik]

Edited out

 

[irmongoose]

You guys are too nice. Obviously this guy is just making stuff up.




irmongoose

 

[generik]

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

Well, my own observations..

When my machine first came I was amazed by how slow it is. 3 weeks down the road and it seems ok (well, it was compared to the previous experience when switching between Firefox windows will result in 30+ seconds of beachball).

My guess is that PERHAPS a new machine is constantly doing something in the background, like indexing the harddrive or something, which takes up a lot of computing juice.

That's just my guess. Generally I'd prefer a PB that runs cooler than a PB that runs faster.

 

[mkrishnan]

My guess is that PERHAPS a new machine is constantly doing something in the background, like indexing the harddrive or something, which takes up a lot of computing juice.

Hmmm...there will be some indexing going on when you first start running your computer, particularly if you move a large number of files onto it. But it should take hours, not weeks, for that to happen. IIRC, you can see from the Spotlight menu that this is going on.

Did anything else change during the three weeks?