Powerbook Question: OS9 on a 1Ghz?

Pitch Black · Post by **Pitch Black** » Thu Jun 03, 2004 6:49 am

Hi

Can anyone confirm, preferably from 1st hand experience, if the 1Ghz Tibooks can run OS9? (Dual-boot, not Classic mode)

I think it can but haven't had the definitive answer

If so, does this apply to ALL 1Ghz Tibooks?

I know that an 867 DVI model WILL and a 1.25 WON'T.

This Luddite is looking to replace his Tibook 500 and I'm thinking of staying with the option of solid, efficient proven OS9 for some stuff for another 2 years or so until a G5 lappy is a proven, tested reality.

cheers
paddy

smutek · Post by **smutek** » Thu Jun 03, 2004 12:52 pm

Hey, I may be wrong here, but I don't think you can buy a new tibook anymore. All the new powerbooks are aluminum. Aluminum powerbooks are not dual boot. I think if you are looking to up your tibook you'll have to get one used.

OsX is pretty solid and quick, why do you want to stay with 9? Have you had bad experiences with X or do you have a load of plugs or something that are 9 only? Resistance to change? I hear you when you say os9 is solid, efficient, and proven, but at this point don't you think X is as well?

Jusrt wondering.

kay101011 · Post by **kay101011** » Thu Jun 03, 2004 2:05 pm

i'm not 100% sure - but yeah i think a 1gig Titanium can boot OS9 ... i allready thought about buying one at ebay and selling my 667dvi.
(i like the design more then that of the aluminium)

Pitch Black · Post by **Pitch Black** » Thu Jun 03, 2004 2:49 pm

smutek wrote: I hear you when you say os9 is solid, efficient, and proven, but at this point don't you think X is as well?

Jusrt wondering.

Hi Smutek

A couple of thoughts. 1, a few people I know are still reporting unexplained crashes with Live and OSX, but I'd be happy and willing to chalk it up to inexperience with Live, OSX, or both.

My main reason for thinking about staying OS9 compatible for a couple more years is that X wants a fast, grunty mac to run at its best. i.e. a G5.
I could either buy a new Alubook and get luxurious Panther performance, but if I am going to be wanting to go to a G5 lappie in say, two years (I think thats a realistic estimate for one to become available), I'm not sure how wise it would be to pay a premium for the latest-and-greatest machine which will be superceeded in 24 months.

To me it seems more economical to buy a second hand 1Ghz Tibook for a good price now, (I'll be very happy with a 2X speed increase) getting pretty good Panther performance (when needed) and great OS9 performance.

Then when the G5 lappy comes out, I sell my 1Ghz Tibook and don't feel so burnt by continuous computer "obsolescence".

It just doesn't feel the right time to fork out big bucks for a system I know I'm REALLY going to want to replace in 2 years.

-paddy

muthafunka · Post by **muthafunka** » Thu Jun 03, 2004 4:21 pm

Absolutely 100% works mate! 1GHz Titanium G4 here running 9.2.2 and X.3.4 dual boot, not only Classic. Even managaed to swing an English install DVD out of the nice Apple Japan people to make sure I got an English-functional 9.2.2 as that's the only 9 you can install, depending where you're getting it from you should make sure about this.

nik

forge · Post by **forge** » Thu Jun 03, 2004 6:16 pm

Pitch Black wrote: My main reason for thinking about staying OS9 compatible for a couple more years is that X wants a fast, grunty mac to run at its best. i.e. a G5.
I could either buy a new Alubook and get luxurious Panther performance, but if I am going to be wanting to go to a G5 lappie in say, two years (I think thats a realistic estimate for one to become available), I'm not sure how wise it would be to pay a premium for the latest-and-greatest machine which will be superceeded in 24 months.

To me it seems more economical to buy a second hand 1Ghz Tibook for a good price now, (I'll be very happy with a 2X speed increase) getting pretty good Panther performance (when needed) and great OS9 performance.

Then when the G5 lappy comes out, I sell my 1Ghz Tibook and don't feel so burnt by continuous computer "obsolescence".

It just doesn't feel the right time to fork out big bucks for a system I know I'm REALLY going to want to replace in 2 years.

-paddy

Sound logic, but I'm really not so sure you'd be even slightly disappointed with a new Al Powerbook.

Maybe I should butt out as I'm not perhaps the best qualified in macs, but my 2c is that, unfortunately computers are by their very nature one of the most highly depreciable items in existence, and so thinking in terms of 2 years down the line is fairly pointless, you really need to just think about now and how you can do what you want to do.

One consolation is that macs do hold their value ALOT better than PCs. My PC laptop is less than a year old and I've seen equivolents floating around ebay for just over HALF what I paid for it!!! That's unbearable. But then I'd probably have a good chance of getting the same if not more money for My upgraded Powerbook which is technically half the clock speed (sorta kinda maybe whoreallyknows....?)

I really think this whole performance thing is not really as bad as it seems and is distorted by an unrealistic perception of what you should have because this particualr point in time is one where we expect trillion ziggabytes of testosterone to do what we would have manged to do a few years ago with an abacus and some old paint tins.

Okay, maybe that's a touch exaggerated, but all I'm saying I've been quite surprised at what I can do with my G3 900 and a G4 1.5 would blow it out of the water - before I got the upgrade (from G3 400) Live 3 was pretty limited, Live 2 a bit more usable, but still not what I'd like, but just over doubled the processor and I can go a surprisingly long way to what my PC does, which is double the clock speed (although athlons are rated oddly and it's supposed to be like a P4 2.2)

In practical terms I'm finding the real life limitations of using my mac compared to PC are in using lots of vstis and soft synths together in real time, usually via FLStudio or Plogue or something like that, I can load more up at once while I'm doing it, but I'm finding that overall, I would NEVER EVER use soft synths on the same machine live because to this day i just don't find it stable enough. Maybe it'll be different if all done in live (4??) with no extra vsti host, but even still as it is I end up having two stages to my production anyway - a sound generation stage, and a mixing/sequencing stage, and I'm really starting to find that this is just normal working practice and it doesn't really seem to make much difference to me whether I use them all at once.

When I use any kind of CPU intensive plug-in, I always freeze or render it as soon as I can, even on the fastest PC because i really find the less you have going on at once from different programs, the less headache.

It seems to be just an unfortunate thing that as hard as alot of software companies work to make theirs compatible with everyone elses, and 95% of the time they tick along perfectly, but that 5% is always the bit that drives you absolutely insane. There will always be compatibility issues, so
I think it's more important to think of computers in terms of 'can I get it to do what i want quickly, comfortably and reliably' as much of the time as is possible

We're entering surreal times now and I think we must make all efforts to keep our eyes on the ball and not forget that these machines are TOOLS to help US do what we're trying to do, rather than letting them becoming the focal point. It's all getting a bit 2001 a space oddysey - WE CANT LET THE BASTARDS GET THE UPPER HAND!

Okay, that was one hell of a rant from someone who probably offered no useful advice, just my humble penny's worth

cheers

smutek · Post by **smutek** » Thu Jun 03, 2004 8:45 pm

forge wrote: not forget that these machines are TOOLS to help US do what we're trying to do, rather than letting them becoming the focal point.

Right on dude. Thats an important lesson, the most important piece of software/equipment we must master is right inside our own heads.

Pitchblack, I have had live crash on me before, but the problem seems to be with certain vst's, most notably supatrigga and crazy ivan by smart electronix. Great plugs, but I found that deleting an instance of one of these while running live will usually cause a crash. I make sure to avoid this. Some of the pluggo stuff will do this as well.

I have also had the entire os go down on me, but that turns out to be from an error on my part. I had installed updated drivers for my quattro without removing the old ones and this had caused me some serious headaches. So yes, I think it is safe to say that most of the problems with X are due to user or third party developers mistakes.

Good luck with your decision.

forge · Post by **forge** » Thu Jun 03, 2004 9:27 pm

I just wanted to add (...is forge still here?

) to actually vaguely kind of relate it to the question, and that is that when you talk about the stability of OS9 being better - do you think maybe that's down to your machine? The newer faster ones must be pretty solid, in fact it's Apple's big boast about it - stability

you're one of the few I've come across that's being saying this, so I'm curious to know if there's specific reasons - partly because my machine was designed with 9 being it's OS, so I wonder if it would be better for me to use.
I mostly use Jaguar at present - apart from just liking it, I mainly prefer OSX because on OS9 I kept finding when setting everything up there was a whole chain of little things like 'carbon lib' etc that needed finding on Apples deliberately cryptic website, and OMS and Sound manager or whatever it is seemed like they had a bit more figuring out to use them (I didn't spend long on it though) - osx is alot more plug n play - but I'd love to hear if there are some good reasons to switch back

god did i just write that much? this was meant to be P.S. - you can tell I'm bored today, cant you?

bensuthers · Post by **bensuthers** » Fri Jun 04, 2004 12:00 am

yes you can, but paddy, time is now to jump.

Pitch Black · Post by **Pitch Black** » Fri Jun 04, 2004 1:07 am

Thanks for the input guys.

I agree, these are just TOOLS to be used, my point being that I have a very good tool in my Tibook 500 right now. Perhaps I should have said in my original post that its not the speed per se why I want to upgrade - I am really happy with the performance I get with my 500 (16-20 tracks in LIVE, 40-50 tracks in Logic) the reason I want a new machine is my Ti has no battery left, an intermittent power adapter and an intermittently pink flashing screen.

Its because I'm not into the "glamour" of the "new thing" that I feel I should wait until there is something REALLY new (G5 laptop) before spending top $$$.

Appreciate your comments very much

cheers
paddy

loophead · Post by **loophead** » Fri Jun 04, 2004 1:52 am

Im a switcher from PC to Mac @ a year ago. Ti 15" laptop G4 1Ghz with a gig of ram. Things can get sluggish at times but I dont understand the os 9 desire. It seems to me that panthers pretty stable and all the core audio/core midi stuff helps...no ? I even thought of dumping os 9 off the drive completely....

Make the jump bro there's no looking back only looking forward.

Good luck with however you go I hope it lets you work better n' better.

muthafunka · Post by **muthafunka** » Fri Jun 04, 2004 2:30 am

Find myself agreeing w/ Loophead here, although I have both OS on my 'book I basically live in X. If you get the Ti you can allow yourself the luxury of keeping 9 and trying X, I never really made a conscious decision to go X, just found myself there and loving it-that said I do still like the look of 9 when I'm there. Who knows, now that Live 4 is "optimized for Mac audio" (one post mentioned Altivec....is this accurate?), it may perform better in X than 9. If/when you do get one of these lovelies, remember to spare some change for a gig of RAM and if you can find one, a handle/stand for the back-looks super good and may just save you dropping the thing, which epecially with these is something you don't wanna do!

kenn michael · Post by **kenn michael** » Fri Jun 04, 2004 10:23 am

One thing you want to keep in mind by staying in OS9 is that transitioning your OS9 projects into OSX is not always easy. OS9 VSTs may not open with their correct settings in OSX... and OS9 VST will definitely not open their OSX AudioUnit counterparts. OSX on a 1GHz TiBook is great. Panther on a 500MHz TiBook runs great as well - with better performance from Live 4 due to Altivec optimizations. Whatever you decide to do machine wise, definitely move to OSX and ditch OS9.

Pitch Black · Post by **Pitch Black** » Fri Jun 04, 2004 3:27 pm

I think I might have overstated the OS issue a bit. I know OSX is my future - hell I'm a Logic user, under no illusions that Logic 7 will not support OS9 - Its all about the hardware cost options:

A: Buy a new 1.5Ghz and weep in 24 months when the resale value REALLY takes a dive with the introduction of the G5 lappy (which I would definately by buying)

-or-

B: Buy a second hand 1Ghz for a LOT less, get continued OS9 into the bargain, and not feel so gypped when I sell it to buy the G5. (or hell, just keep it as my "legacy" machine since it would be worth feck-all)

I AM happily using OSX all the time for some things already...

Thanks again for the input
paddy