Tuesday, January 10th, 2006
Mac Expo
Well, that was a little underwhelming. But oh well, the Mac addicts out there are now officially PC users. Heh. So, how long before someone fires up a new Dual Core Windows laptop and a new Dual Core Apple laptop and launches Photoshop to see who gets some whiz-bang filter operation done faster? I want my speed braggin’ rights dammit! Windows naturally has Apple price beat by a mile, but what about pure operating system performance?? With the hardware playing field leveled, we finally get to put the performance argument to rest (for now). My money’s on Windows. 
One nice side effect I’m hoping for, Apple should do a pretty good job of dealing with heat dissipation on Intel processors.. (read: fan noise) hopefully showing the Windows vendors how it’s done.
January 10th, 2006 at 2:54 pm
Jeremy said:
So here is a quick price comparison…
Apple MacBook Pro
Dual Core 1.83 Ghz
1GB RAM
100GB HD
15.4″ Widescreen
5.6lbs
DVDRW
$2499.00
Acer Travelmate 8204
Dual Core 2.0 Ghz
1GB RAM
120GB HD
15.4″ Screen
6.7lbs
DVDRW
$2499.00
So on the price thing when it comes to dual core… things are pretty darn close now. On performance, we will have to wait for a new version of Photoshop running native (or Universal) to see.
I do totally agree that the announcements were a bit lackluster though. I was really looking forward to some fun new stuff… oh well.
January 10th, 2006 at 4:14 pm
Jim Mathies said:
I actually checked the Dell Inspiron when I wrote this to see how the prices matched up. It’s cheaper than the Acer, ($2300.00) and sports a 17″ screen. But your right, the price difference isn’t huge.
January 10th, 2006 at 4:18 pm
Jim Mathies said:
Actually, found another article quoting a slightly lower price and built one on the Dell store for about $2000.00.
http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=2705
$400 – $500, that’s a pretty big markup.
January 10th, 2006 at 5:53 pm
Jeremy said:
Actually I saw that after posting… Okay I give… It is $400 more for the Apple logo
I think today was a bummer for the Apple community all in all I think. I will check out the new blog and casting stuff, but it seriously lacked the coolness factor of years gone by. Mr Beattie summed it up well http://www.russellbeattie.com/notebook/1008739.html
January 10th, 2006 at 9:30 pm
Nick said:
Actually, doing a side by side test of Photoshop would be a bad idea, Windows would win hands down. For the moment, Photoshop and most Mac applications will be running through the Rossetta emulator which converts the old programs for the intel processor.
Once we see the new Mac Intel friendly versions come out, then we can start doing the power tests.