If you get a new iBook direct from Apple you get a 1.2GHz G4 with a 32MB Radeon 9200 for $999. (I think this is the best deal you can get on a laptop for any platform -- no name Linux laptops cost $700 and aren't of nearly this quality.) For $800 you can get a 1.25GHz eMac (yeah, I know, blech). Why bid $800 on an 800MHz box (second hand?)?
Performance-wise, I'd say that the G4 compares favorably with a PC running at 1.5x the clockspeed. A dual-G4 compares favorably with a PC running at 2x the clockspeed. (Individual apps may run slower, but the OS uses the spare processor to keep things going.)
Before you dismiss this as the effects of Steve Jobs's Reality Distortion Field (tm):
1) I'm currently (well, not at this moment!) playing World of Warcraft on my 2.5y old dual 1GHz G4 with its original Radeon 9000 (64MB I think). It is running faster than it did on my wife's 1.5y old 2.4GHz Dell (with a 128MB FX5200 video card), but slower than on my 2.4GHz Dell with a 256MB FX5600. It only chokes when I fly through Ironforge on a griffin (but so does my wife's Dell).
2) Photoshop, Firefox, et al launch and run as fast or faster on the Mac than the Dells (and they're not reliant on GPU the way WoW is).
Incidentally -- BlitzMax runs dandy on my old dual G4, and (given that I don't think it takes advantage of dual processors) should run even better on a new iBook.
Performance-wise, I'd say that the G4 compares favorably with a PC running at 1.5x the clockspeed. A dual-G4 compares favorably with a PC running at 2x the clockspeed. (Individual apps may run slower, but the OS uses the spare processor to keep things going.)
Before you dismiss this as the effects of Steve Jobs's Reality Distortion Field (tm):
1) I'm currently (well, not at this moment!) playing World of Warcraft on my 2.5y old dual 1GHz G4 with its original Radeon 9000 (64MB I think). It is running faster than it did on my wife's 1.5y old 2.4GHz Dell (with a 128MB FX5200 video card), but slower than on my 2.4GHz Dell with a 256MB FX5600. It only chokes when I fly through Ironforge on a griffin (but so does my wife's Dell).
2) Photoshop, Firefox, et al launch and run as fast or faster on the Mac than the Dells (and they're not reliant on GPU the way WoW is).
Incidentally -- BlitzMax runs dandy on my old dual G4, and (given that I don't think it takes advantage of dual processors) should run even better on a new iBook.