[vader89]

My older brother is looking for a laptop, and he found the 12" ibook g4 at comp-usa for $999. It looks good to him, and he's wondering whether he should buy it or not. My brother is definately not a computer genius,though, and our family has NEVER owned I mac. I've played around with a few macs at the computer store and have absolutely loved them, but my brother has only used windows, and would like something that doesn't have a BIG learning curve.

He wants to use the computer for the following tasks:

-Sychronizing with his Sony Clie' palm OS handheld

-Transfering photos from his Sony Digital camera

-Editing digital photos

-Writing papers for college

-Going on the internet

-music stuff

Will he be able to do this all easily? He could care less about games, so the lack of mac games is no problem at all. He's an artist, not a computer nerd.

Is the ibook g4 a good buy for him?

[ghporter]

You bet yer {some euphanism for posterior} it's a good buy, and particularly for the uses your brother intends to put it to. Macs, in general, are seen as superior to PCs in graphics and image editing. And it's no great feat of intelligence to figure out how to use a Mac of any type-particularly given the nifty stuff that comes with an iBook.

Finally, I've shopped around, and decided that the iBook is the most cost-effective ultralight notebook computer on the market, bar none.

Tell your brother to go for it!

[Lateralus]

What he said^

And frankly, the 'Mac Experience' is defined not by the hardware, but by the software. And on the software front, Apple is leading the pack. There is no respective software, regardless of platform, that can compete with iTunes, iPhoto and GarageBand on ease of use, reliability and capability.

[vader89]

Will he be able to sync his sony clie t665c? This is just about the only issue stopping him.

[Lateralus]

According to this page, a third party application is required to sync the T665C.

[mrweirdo]

Im looking at the ibook in for similar use. Only thing i have realy notice or am a bit worried about is system responsiveness. The macs i have used demos and other systems at school dont seem to be able to open things, etc as fast as eather windows or linux can.

stuff I have experience with:
new ibook and pb displays at best buy. I believe the ibook has 256mb. The PB might of had 512MB.
Also I have used an eMac 800mhz G4 512MB RAM with mac os 10.2

[Langdon]

Originally posted by vader89:
My older brother is looking for a laptop, and he found the 12" ibook g4 at comp-usa for $999.

Is the ibook g4 a good buy for him?

No, that sounds like it is a G4 800. For $999 you can get the 1Ghz iBook from apple if you are a student. You pay taxes no matter what so I would go the education route.

[vader89]

Originally posted by Langdon:
No, that sounds like it is a G4 800. For $999 you can get the 1Ghz iBook from apple if you are a student. You pay taxes no matter what so I would go the education route.

Yeah.. but shipping to Hawaii costs quite a bit. Shipping something like that over-seas usually costs $100 which would cancel out all of the student savings.

[justinf77]

Originally posted by vader89:
Yeah.. but shipping to Hawaii costs quite a bit. Shipping something like that over-seas usually costs $100 which would cancel out all of the student savings.

Even if it cancelled out the student savings, you still have a faster machine (1 Ghz vs 800 mhz). Why not get what you can now? Resale value will be higher if you sell it in the future.

And synchronizing the Clie should be easy, check out:

www.markspace.com

Definitely get the iBook, awesome machine!

[SFZoll]

I understand the comment about the load speed of some applications on the iBook being slower than some applications in Windows. Overall though, some of that is misleading if one is comparing something like MS Office programs, Internet Explorer, etc in Windows v. Office programs or IE for Mac, etc. Obviously Microsoft has pre-loaded lots of stuff to make its applications load quickly. Don't believe it, if you don't have it download and install Netscape Navigator 7.x in Windows but don't select the option to pre-load parts of the program. See how slow it is? Uninstall it and reinstall it again. When offered the option to pre-load to make it faster, select that option. Now launch Netscape Navigator. It is much comparable to Internet Explorer in terms of load speed. What we learn here is that load speed in Windows depends on the application and its creator. If you are talking non-MS applications, the load speeds are typically a lot slower.

However/whatever one believes, load speed is one thing while performance while using the application and OS is what matters more. All the applications I've thrown at my iBook have performed great once loaded and I find it somehow peaceful to come home after a day of working in Windows 2000 to sit down to this Mac. Unless one is doing a bunch of number crunching or heavy image manipulation that requires a fast processor, an iBook is a sweet machine. I know, I know, lots of IMO there.

[mrweirdo]

Actualy I havent realy compared the m$ apps to each other since I dont realy use them too often. I prefer Mozilla over other browsers and have been using it for some time. I notice it loads slightly faster in windows over the mac version with pre load off. Not sure why could be other factors like hardware also for one my desktop AMD 2200+ has a 7200rpm 8MB Hard Drive.I have also used an Athlon FX 53 with 1GB and a raid setup for awhile. Mayby thats why I'm now bothered a bit by speed. Even my own desktop seems slower then heck now lol. That probably spoiled me I never used to be bothered by speed in the past.

The bigest area were I can see some difference is caused by Hard Drive speeds. Apples notebooks dont have drives that are as fast. The iBook comes with a 4200 rpm drive while the PB can be upgraded to a 5400 rpm. 7200 rpm drives have been out awhile even for laptops and I have seen some PC laptops using them. Even though there can be a heat issue I wonder why apple doesnt offer an upgrade option to 7200 rpm in their PB design and use a 5400 rpm in the iBook line or offer the upgrade option to it.