New member to the Family
I just picked up a new Dell Dimension 4700 with 17 inch LCD. It’s stark black and sitting right next to my white G4 PowerMac… Ying and Yang. It’s a P4 2.8ghz with Hyper Threading. I don’t want to mention the ram or video ram as I’ll be upgrading those as soon as possible, although for what I’m using it for so far, it purrs along just fine.
In fact, I never realized how loud my MDD Dual 1.25 G4 actually was (even with the standard Delta fan replaced with a quiet Panaflo fan). You can only hear the P4 when the hard drive is spinning.
On that note, I installed Apple’s CHUD tools (3.5.2) for better processor management, so both processors don’t run full blast when not needed. It brought my cpu temp down about 40°. Awesome! Few things I noticed between the 2 comparably equipped desktops:
- Bootup:
PowerMac takes 4 seconds longer. Now, I’m sure it’s because of all the services I run at startup, including Apache web server. Or it’s due to the large number of programs I’ve got installed or my huge Font collection. But the fresh XP box does load considerably faster. I’m sure it’ll slow down as I use it more and install a few more apps. - Networking:
I was able to network my wife’s computer (I gave her my old PIII 1.13ghz Sony Vaio Laptop) and my P4 with no troubles. I was able to share my PowerMac’s documents with my P4 with no troubles. Sharing iTunes on all 3 systems was a snap. Viewing my P4’s documents through my PowerMac hasn’t bee 100% smooth though. I think it might be because my network isn’t called “Workgroup”, not sure yet. If you’ve got any suggestions, please post a comment below. - Screen fonts:
XP’s screen font smoothing sucks. Text is crisp and smooth on my G4, it took alot of tweaking to get text smooth and readable on my P4. - Packaging:
Everything about unpacking my Mac was nothing less than exciting. The box was white and gray/sliver, all CD’s and documents were packaged on top in a fancy little booklet. Getting my Dell was kinda boring. It came in a brown box with giant posters instructing me how to plug my computer into the wall… AND it came with an AOL CD (AOL is crap, for all of you who don’t know). The experience was sub-par, but then again Apple is kinda the king when it comes to user experience.