ibook vs notebook - HELP :)

[AcidMaX]

I am thinking about picking up a laptop for myself before we go to vegas and I am wondering what would be good. I am thinking about either an Apple G4 ibook or a pc 2.4 ghz notebook. I was just browsing best buy and both seem comparible except in ghz, but the ibook is an PowerPC or something which I know nothing about. I have all PC's now but have wanted an apple since they started running a modified FreeBSD.

I mostly just do programming, email & graphics stuff on my computers, nothing fancy. I have things like Adobe Go Live, Photoshop & Trillian/ICQ. Just curious on your thoughts, I really want to get an Apple, but im wondering what a pain in the ass they are.

Andy

[Cleo]

Yeah you can not compare processor speed across platforms since they are so different.

Running *nix as your desktop is really sweet and NO VIRUSES, non, not even one. Not having to worry about some site changing your home page or anything nasty like that is real sweet too.

The G4 iBooks are real nice machines at a lower cost then the Powerbooks. I own a 1ghz 17" Powerbook with 1 gig of ram and is real fast and just an awesome laptop. It also has built in WiFi, Firewire, Bluetooth, USB, and a DVD burner.

I'm a Golive/Photoshop/ImageReady user myself.

Macs works great with an iPod. I have the 40 gig one and have about 16 gigs of music on it plus a complete backup of my system and can even boot from my iPod if I need to. Plus using iSync with it all my addresses are on and calender too. For a cell phone I use the Sony Ericsson T610 and it also syncs with the Mac's address book and calender. So basically my Mac, my iPod, and my cell phone all have all my infomation. I set up a crontab that tells iSync to sync everything at 4am so I don't even have to remember to do anything.


My favorite browser is Mozilla. You can get a Google Bar for it.

A nice free app for making bootable backups to a firewire drive, like an iPod, is Carbon Copy Cloner .

I'm not crazy about single button mice. This one Kensington is my favorite and is only $20.


BBEdit is a very powerful code editor
http://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/index.shtml

They also have a Free version of BBEdit
ftp://ftp.barebones.com/pub/freeware...te_612.smi.hqx

You could also use TexEdit which is the Mac's built in editor, it also opens World docs with formating if you don't have Microsoft word.

A good place to search for Mac software is VersionTracker
A fast search shows lots HTML editors many that are free.

You can also run a lot of Linux software. Fink keeps a list of compiled packages. Fink Commander makes it nice and easy to install and compile.

I used Fink to install Gimp for free. They are sell for a for a few bucks a version with a GUI installer. It's a pretty decent image editor, no Photoshop killer, but it is free and fun to use.

Mail order is really the way to go when buying Mac hardware and software. There are dozens of mail order places to choose from. MacMall is where I buy most of my stuff from.

The big difference is between an iBook and a Powerbook is how explainable they are. Powerbooks have a PC slot and can drive a 22" monitor in addition to the built in screen so you can keep all your pallets on one screen and your work area on another. No matter what you be sure to get lots of RAM, 512 minimal.

[Chris001]

Macs are killers when it comes to graphics, you will definately get more speed out of it if you do a lot of graphics work.

[Cleo]

A good place to learn more about the iBook is Apple's iBook page.
http://www.apple.com/ibook/

[Cleo]

Saw this while surfing this morning

Why Not Buy A Mac?

[RawAlex]

Sorry Cleo, I can't resist... I don't think i have seen anything like this in a while:

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/biztech...eut/index.html

Seems Apple may have a few little issues of it's own to work with.

Ipods that you can't replace the battery on? Now that is good business move! :-)

Alex

[Cleo]

You have to love the lawyers, NOT.

The new MP3 players from Dell use the same battery design. It is much better then having regular reachable batteries come loose as you are working out.

You can change the battery on an iPod.
http://ipodbattery.com
They sell for $49.

Yeah some Mac models are better then others. Back in the nineties Apple sold Powerbooks who's batteries exploded and caught fire. Apple doesn't seem to do well with batteries. LOL

The G3 Powerbooks were always less then great, but they were only meant for use in schools by students so being rugged enough for a backpack was the only really good thing about them besides being really cheap. They have stopped making the G3 iBook and have replaced them with a much better G4 iBook.

Anyway I never said that Apple was perfect, but I do love using Mac OS X on my 17" Powerbook.

[Alphawolf]

RawAlex,

Saw that article as well.

"Apple has won raves over the years for its sleekly designed computers. The company, with a market share of around 2 percent, is able to command higher prices due in part to Apple machines being perceived as more secure and reliable than PCs running Microsoft's Windows operating system."

Then I came across this:

http://www.technewsworld.com/perl/story/32408.html

AcidMaX, are you prepared to buy all your PC apps again in the Mac versions?

Check this out:

ThinkPad T40p...

http://www-132.ibm.com/webapp/wcs/st...goryId=2072541

And...

http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/artic...,113454,00.asp

I suppose if ya have a lot of money invested on either platform you're gonna be dedicated to it. Even Google stats show Mac at just 3%:

http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist_nov03.html

If you wanna check out a Mac to just try why not pick up an older iBook from Ebay that has been upgraded to OS X and get a feel for what you'd need to buy software wise for it to be useful to you?

Go to a computer "superstore" if ya can and just look at different models. A lot of notebook look great these days.

[Cleo]

He says that he writes programs. If he writes Windows programs that he should get a machine that runs Windows, but he is writing stuff for the web then running a flavor on *nix would be the better choice. It comes down to Mac OS X or Linux. The trouble with running Linux is Adobe apps do not run on it and many drivers are also missing. Also the energy management for laptops is not very good on Linux from what I read.

Actually most of the computers in the world run some flavor on *nix. Windows only is more popular on the desktop.

It all comes down to what you need a laptop for.

[AcidMaX]

I really wanted an iBook but the fact of the matter is that because I use many of the Adobe Apps and such for web design, it just wasnt feasible for me to switch to mac yet, I didnt want to buy the laptop and all new versions of software.

I wound up getting a new 2.4ghz laptop with some great features for $650 from Best Buy (after rebates). The price was right and I didnt have to switch. My problem right now is I use both a FreeBSD workstation and Windows, managing multiple copies of software like Adobe Photoshop would be a pain. Maybe I will get a used iBook sometime to mess with, or get my wife one to play with in the next couple months, but since my work will revolve around this laptop I had to get a PC since all my stuff worked on it.

I mostly develop web apps, but i do a lot of design work as well for people so the design apps are needed as well.

Thanks for the advice and the great places to look, I will definitely get one sometime I have been a big fan of FreeBSD for about 5 years or so and run it on my development boxes and webservers and very rarely run linux on anything. I mostly wanted it just to have a FreeBSD laptop but I could always install it on here if I want and run the windows emulator for some of the apps if the bug bites me

Thanks again,
Andy

[Cleo]

I you enjoy such things you can download Darwin (based on BSD) for the 86x platform from Apple's site since it is open source. http://developer.apple.com/darwin/index.html

It naturally doesn't have the Aqua window manager since that is not open source and only runs on Mac.

Anyway its been a fun thread.

[Alphawolf]

Originally posted by Cleo
It all comes down to what you need a laptop for.

Yep.

Though, I am highly suspect of any platform that doesn't allow me to play ultra violent games.

Will Doom III and Half-Life II run under a Mac? I think the most intense game ever on a Mac was, er- MYST.

Jokin'.

BTW, if he bought a Win based system he can probably Dual boot from his favorite Linux varient.

Windows based laptops can be had with 128MB Video memory or in the case of that IBM:
==============================================
Video RAM std/max 64MB / 64MB
Description ATI Mobility FIRE GL 9000
Graphics type SXGA+
Video RAM type DDR SDRAM
Max resolution 2048x1536 16777216 colors
Max colors (with max video RAM) 16777216
Graphics bus interface AGP 4X
Max resolution external display 2048x1536 16777216 colors
Video on Planar Yes

ThinkPad T41p/R50p Mobile Workstation Certifications - 22 Dec 2003

An extensive independent software vendor testing and certification process verifies that ThinkPad mobile workstations can run some of the most demanding, graphics-intensive workstation applications. This document provides certification information for ThinkPad T41p and R50p models.
=============================================

Not sure how much of a lead Mac's have in graphics these days.

This desktop system *does* awesome:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,1418475,00.asp

Still, it didn't blow away the Windows systems:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149...,00.asp?kc=574

Would be cool to see a comparison between the most equal iBook and that IBM I have a chubby for.

Yeah- fun thread. In all honesty and prejudice aside, I am not sure what advantage a Mac has over a Windows system these days.

[Alphawolf]

Originally posted by AcidMaX
I really wanted an iBook but the fact of the matter is that because I use many of the Adobe Apps and such for web design, it just wasnt feasible for me to switch to mac yet, I didnt want to buy the laptop and all new versions of software.

I wound up getting a new 2.4ghz laptop with some great features for $650 from Best Buy (after rebates). The price was right and I didnt have to switch. My problem right now is I use both a FreeBSD workstation and Windows, managing multiple copies of software like Adobe Photoshop would be a pain. Maybe I will get a used iBook sometime to mess with, or get my wife one to play with in the next couple months, but since my work will revolve around this laptop I had to get a PC since all my stuff worked on it.

I mostly develop web apps, but i do a lot of design work as well for people so the design apps are needed as well.

Thanks for the advice and the great places to look, I will definitely get one sometime I have been a big fan of FreeBSD for about 5 years or so and run it on my development boxes and webservers and very rarely run linux on anything. I mostly wanted it just to have a FreeBSD laptop but I could always install it on here if I want and run the windows emulator for some of the apps if the bug bites me

Thanks again,
Andy

Andy,

Wow. That was a quick purchase, man!

I'm curious what probs you have on your Windows system that prompted you to consider switching platforms?

Was the laptop you bought a brand name? if so- what did ya get?

Glad you found something you like.