Just looked more closely into the Aspire V3-112P. There seem to be two versions -- one has a Celeron N2940, and the other has a Pentium N3540. Both are impressive chips, all things considered, and as Gorgonops suggested, you probably found GeekBench 3 scores for the Aspire, and GeekBench 2 scores for the G4. Ultimately, I would not at all be surprised to find out that this thing is ten times as fast as the G4, at just about everything.
User experience means a lot though, and it sounds like the real core problems here are...
My best and most honest solution for the keyboard and touchpad, however, are to get a different computer, or to give up on portability and "dock" this system with a desktop keyboard and mouse. I've given up faster systems than the aforementioned ThinkPad T400 because I didn't like using them, but going all the way back to a G4 would be completely ludicrous.
For an example of how bad the performance on a G4 really is, I got a midrange ThinkPad T30 from 2002 (the 1.8GHz model) and for funnies, ran Cinebench on it. It got the same score that the 1.67GHz PowerBook G4 from 2005 gets. A ThinkPad from 2005 will outgun it by that much more.
If this is a productive kind of computer, I think the real question I'd be asking is why bother with a Mac if a PC will be faster, and to be perfectly honest, if you're going to seek out a good business-class PC, why bother with something from 2005, when things from 2009 are free or cheap, at this point?
User experience means a lot though, and it sounds like the real core problems here are...
- keyboard
- touchpad
- web pages load slowly
My best and most honest solution for the keyboard and touchpad, however, are to get a different computer, or to give up on portability and "dock" this system with a desktop keyboard and mouse. I've given up faster systems than the aforementioned ThinkPad T400 because I didn't like using them, but going all the way back to a G4 would be completely ludicrous.
For an example of how bad the performance on a G4 really is, I got a midrange ThinkPad T30 from 2002 (the 1.8GHz model) and for funnies, ran Cinebench on it. It got the same score that the 1.67GHz PowerBook G4 from 2005 gets. A ThinkPad from 2005 will outgun it by that much more.
If this is a productive kind of computer, I think the real question I'd be asking is why bother with a Mac if a PC will be faster, and to be perfectly honest, if you're going to seek out a good business-class PC, why bother with something from 2005, when things from 2009 are free or cheap, at this point?