[amazonbutterfly]

I am going to buy an ibook -my first mac. I am an english major in college so writing and web surfing will be my primary activities possibly a webpage or two but no photoshop or anything like that.

I have enough cash to get the 800 and i want to know how important having the cdrw is as that (to me) is the biggest difference between the 800 and 900mhz ibooks... I figure if it becomes necessary to transport files i can purchase an external drive or one of those USB disk on key things.

jes.

[hunkhuang]

The future is CDRW, no more MM card or zipdisk whatever..

If you have enough money, grab a 900 ...

[chabig]

At the Apple online store:

iBook 800Mhz/128MB/30GB/Combo/E/56K/12.1" TFT - Refurbished $999.00

iBook 900MHz/128MB/40GB/Combo/E/56K/12"TFT - Refurbished $1,079.00

So the 900 is only $80 more, and you get a larger hard drive too.

Don't forget to check education prices also. And if you're short on cash, check used prices in the marketplace forum.

Chris

[damosan]

Originally posted by chabig:
At the Apple online store:

iBook 800Mhz/128MB/30GB/Combo/E/56K/12.1" TFT - Refurbished $999.00

iBook 900MHz/128MB/40GB/Combo/E/56K/12"TFT - Refurbished $1,079.00

So the 900 is only $80 more, and you get a larger hard drive too.

Don't forget to check education prices also. And if you're short on cash, check used prices in the marketplace forum.

Chris

The 900 ibooks make my 700mhz model look like it's standing still. Bite the bullet and get the 900 model.

[ae86_16v]

If you don't need one soon, you might want to wait until the revision.

[DeathMan]

Originally posted by ae86_16v:
If you don't need one soon, you might want to wait until the revision.

Always wait for the next revision. I'd say get it, and enjoy it. iBook owners are, with a very few exceptions, happy with their purchases.

I don't think the iBook is much of a step back from the powerbook in most respects. So if you're going to wait for the next revision of something, it would be the powerbooks. but thats not happening for quite some time.

Get the iBook 900. Those things are pretty nice.

[Luca Rescigno]

Originally posted by DeathMan:
Always wait for the next revision. I'd say get it, and enjoy it. iBook owners are, with a very few exceptions, happy with their purchases.

I don't think the iBook is much of a step back from the powerbook in most respects. So if you're going to wait for the next revision of something, it would be the powerbooks. but thats not happening for quite some time.

Get the iBook 900. Those things are pretty nice.

I'd have to disagree with basically all of your post

Yes, it's silly to always wait for the next revision, but the iBooks are next in line to get an upgrade. They've gone six months with no upgrades so hopefully they'll get bumped up soon. Also the PPC 750GX is ramping up so once it's in production you can expect the next batch of iBooks to be the first computers to use them.

I believe the iBook is QUITE a step back from a PowerBook. They represent a fairly good price/performance ratio, but not as good as a year ago (November 2002) when they were the exact same as now except with slightly smaller hard drives and 100 MHz slower. Think about it... a 100 MHz faster processor and 10 GB extra storage in an entire year? Not a great jump. They still don't incorporate any new wireless technology which belongs in laptops, not desktops (who needs Airport Extreme on an eMac?). Also, the G3 processor feels slow. It's not just slow on paper or anything, it really is SLOW for everyday use. Even basic things, like if you try to listen to music while surfing the internet and talking on iChat, are frustratingly slow. Text input would slow down throughout the system, while iChat's scrolling would lag quite badly. Part of this is the fault of the slow hard drive, but part of it is certainly the slow processor. Moving to my 1 GHz G4 eMac, I am seeing a huge difference in performance. It's like moving from an LC III to a Quadra 950 (although if this is your first Mac you won't know what I'm really talking about). I just don't have to wait for things to happen anymore. And yes, I did have 640 MB of RAM in the iBook. Same with the eMac.

I think even a used 867 MHz PowerBook G4 12" would be better than a 900 MHz iBook, and it would cost about the same too. Yeah, it's used, but it's faster and more full-featured. The G4 makes a big difference in my experience.

So, my advice would be to either pick up a PowerBook G4 (used or new, get the 12" 867 from Apple's refurb section if that's all you can afford), or wait for the next revision of the iBooks and then buy. I have a feeling that if you buy an iBook now, you'll be kicking yourself about a month from now.

[radarbob]

PowerBook is a performance improvement over iBook. Comparing a propeller airplane to a jet fighter? NO, not that big a difference.

Many parts of OS X, and some apps, like photoshop, are optimized to take advantage of the "altevec engine" in the G4. Things run faster there.

Slow is in the eye of the beholder. I use OS X on a 300MHz iBook every day. I find overall performance acceptable. Yes. I've adjusted my "speed think."

Also, I think my wife's 700MHz iBook is more than adequate. She does a lot of stuff in MS Word and on the internet.

OK, I admit it, one specific performance hit: I don't try to print a large document and surf the internet and write a doc in Word all that the same time. HP printer drivers seem to suck the life out of the thing.

When my brother bought his 800MHz iBook (his 1st Mac) he was *very* impressed with it's performance - it came w/ Jaguar (OS 10.2) installed.

OH, get the CDRW. The first time you really need to transfer a file - especially to a PC - you'll be very glad you did.

Normally I say "buy now, you'll be waiting forever for the next best thing", but L.R. has a point. I suspect we are in the ballpark of time for iBook revisions. Less than 6 months, more that 2.5 months is my guess. If apple comes out w/ a significantly changed model, the older ones typically get a modest discount. The original 300MHz iBook was $1,599; look what you get for $600 less now!! - But I wasn't gonna wait 4 years. Understand?

[Hop Pocket]

Regarding the iBook's slowness, I'd have to agree with you only if you are coming from OSX 10.1.5 or earlier.

Right now, I'm running 10.2.8 on my iBook 700 and it is extremely agile for a G3 processor. And I work most of the time on my dual 1.25, so I understand what more speed is on OSX.

Granted, I use my iBook for more 'normal' things (i.e. no data crunching or extreme photoshop manipulation with 500 layers), but every day I am running and using frequently:

Safari
iChat
iTunes
LaunchBar
iCal
Mail
Omni*
RealPlayer

With no complaints. The only way I can see that the iBook would not be sufficient for these tasks would be if either there were a setup issue with regards to the OS or perhaps if there was a shortage of RAM on the machine, which really does hamper performance greatly.

[BrettOZ]

I have an iBook 800 and I would highly recommend getting the CDRW model - purely for the fact from a backup perspective. USB keyrings are nice, but external drives are a pain when you just want to be portable.

[scottiB]

Refurbished 12.1" PowerBook/867/40/Combo is $1199.

My advice is either to wait until a refresh or buy the refurb iBook/900 for $1079 (ack, my iBook 700/30GB was +$1500 in May, 2002).