Dell Mini 9 Hacintosh vs 12" Powerbook G4 Aluminum A1104

The Dell Mini9 has a Intel Atom Processor N270 running at 1.6GHz with 2GB of Ram and a 16GB SSD and cost around £280 when new and worth around £200 now.

The Apple Macintosh 12" Powerbook Aluminum A1104 has a PowerPC 7447A G4 Processor running at 1.5GHz with 1.25GB of Ram and a 80GB HDD and cost around £2100 when new and worth around £480 now.

This demo was done just to show the boot time differences between both machines.
Price differences between a real mac and a hackmac are enormous considering the hardware is off the shelf since apple adopted Intel PC architecture. The only problems with hackmacs are that major system update can break it, but most of the time patches are available to fix the issues and some compatibility issues can arise with certain hardware configurations.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Dell
• Mini9
• Hacintosh
• vs
• 12
• Powerbook
• G4
• Aluminum
• A1104

[jimjimthehumanbin]

hairyshitter - apart from loving that name i also agree with your point. but apple is the porsche of the computer world. their stuff just looks like you can do work faster. i use both pc and mac and linux. they're just a tool for getting what you need done at the end of the day.

[hairyshitter]

@jimjimthehumanbin

I use all three systems myself, apple I specifically use for video editing/post processing, windows I use for general tasks, diagnostics, data logging, patching and play, linux is used for general tasks, file serving (FreeNAS), web serving (apache) and as a media centre (XBMC), and the best thing is now they can all co-exist and share files and resources with each other, I'd say use the best tool for the best.

[hairyshitter]

The only negative I have to say about apple is hardware cost, essentially you are buying PC hardware at a heavy mark-up, I could understand before when they used PowerPC hardware, but the price doesn't justify the cost of components and chassy, you might argue R&D for the chassy design but as for the hardware its all pretty much standard equipment, maybe a 30-50% mark-up but some of the systems are well over the double mark for the same hardware.

[chumays]

dude i got a 12¨powerbook g4 867 mhz. 1.12 ram and is not as slow as this one.

[hairyshitter]

@chumays

What version of OSX are you running, Tiger is considerably faster then Leopard on PowerPC architecture, plus the Dell has a Solid State Disk installed.

[lovecrycrystal]

I think the boot time difference is based on the ssd

[hairyshitter]

@lovecrycrystal

The SSD has an impact on the loading times, but I think the kernel for Leopard and above have been optimised for Intel over PowerPC architecture. If Tiger was running on both machines then results might be different.

[Chintendoeddman]

@gunthermeyer Well the Netbook has a faster processor, more ram, and most importantly, an SSD drive.

[macuse2008]

my 12" PB boots leopard alot faster than that...hard drive speed also plays into it. Plus, OSX wasn't meant to run on a screen THAT small...i thought the 12" was small sheesh

[gunthermeyer]

Why does the hacintosh load faster than the original Macintosh computer ? I like Apple's operating system but hate their computers.

[chumays]

@hairyshitter

youre right dude its tiger, well now i know why it boots faster thanks, guess im sticking to tiger but really wanted to try gamesalad. n n