[flypenfly]

I just sold my TiBook 867 for $1500 (had lots of extras) and am now looking to buy a new portable.

I am a very recent college graduate and also received admission and a full scholarship + stipend to attend the U of Florida for a Masters of Fine Arts in Graphics Design. As I understand it, I'll be working quite a bit in a private studio they will be providing me and possibly will be teaching classes or helping other departments with their graphics needs.

I mostly use Dreamweaver MX2004 and Photoshop with a bit of Illustrator and sometimes Flash thrown in. I do use Virtual PC every so often to insure IE compatibility with my websites (I've noticed IE for Mac does not always render the same as IE for windows).

Now the main reason I got rid of my Tibook was because I felt the screen realestate was slightly lacking and 867 honestly feels a bit sluggish even after the Dreamweaver MX2004 update.

The obvious answer so far seems the 17" with the 5400Rpm drive and a crucial 512mb stick thrown in. But this will cost me roughly around 2650 + tax with the EDU discount, about a 100 bucks less with the Developer connection discount but its not significantly more. (you have to account for the $100 joining fee).

Now I was thinking about it, and it occured to me that the whole point of buying a laptop is portability. So why not pick up the 12" since its only 166mhz slower. But the idea of working in 1024x768 frightens me especially with Dreamweaver. I plan on buying a 21" Sony FD Trinitron CRT for my studio with either option so when I'm at the studio, I can just hook it up to the bigger monitor (although I worry about signal quality from the Nvidia chipset) and have a lot more screen real estate. Yet if I ever venture out to work at say a Starbucks or if I am travelling, my working capacity is diminished. Then again, I'll be lugging around from my Apt to School all the time too so a 3lbs save is probably nice. And also the cost is roughly $1000 less than the 17" option with the RAM updgrade and HD upgrade.

I insist on using at least a 5400rpm drive as I was spoiled on the 7200rpm hitachi drive in the Tibook with a gig of ram.

Now while the Powerbook is going to be my bread and butter, going to grad school I'm going to have to spend money on a car + insurance + apt + other crap I need. I can make a $1000 go a long way.

Now the third evil option is to buy a Thinkpad T42 or an R40. I do have a powerhouse (P4 3.2C 2gig ram, 400gb HDs, Radeon 9700 AIW) that I'll be keeping in my apt mostly for PVR, Games, etc. While thinking about this, it occured to me that my main app, Dreamweaver 2004 is much better (especially with file tabs) on XP than OS X. Its snappier and better organized. But I gotta give credit to Apple that even though I know what's good for me, I still want to keep my portable an Apple. Should I just snap out of my Apple fetish and buy into Corporate America's Thinkpad?

FlyPenFly

[iREZ]

I'm getting my BA in graphic design, and I have a 12" Rev B and it works fine for me, but if I had a choice I'd stick with the 15" form factor. You could get the graphic card update which will help alot when using an external monitor and the 15" is still really portable and you wont be screwed when on the go cuz you'll still have some real estate. I know it's tempting to go with the 12" cuz you'd be paying nearly nothing, but if you wanna keep this toy for a little while longer, I'd opt for the 15" superdrive option without the superdrive, but thats just me. In all honesty you'd be just fine with the 12" as well and ohh is it portable, but the 15" would be pretty nice. Tough choice, but you'll have fun with whatever you choose. If portability is what your lookin for, stay clear of the 17", too big to lug around everywhere unless you have no books in your bag, then it's not soo bad. Hope this helped ya.

[jstein]

First of all cograts to both of you guys on attaining your degrees. Flypenfly, IREZ basically took the words out of mouth. I was wondering why the 15 inch was not the model you had in mind. With the last pb updates, the 15 inch with the Super Drive has everything that the 17inch has, just a smaller size screen. If you go with the 15 inch model, you will have the portablility you need and a good size screen to work with. Do not get me wrong, the 17 inch pb is a beast, and if you do not mind carrying it around everyday by all means go for it. However if you do mind, go with the 15 inch model and with the money you saved buy a nice 7200 RPM external firewire HD for backing up all your work and do not forget you can also boot up from there as well.

[flypenfly]

Well the reasons why I don't want to go with the 15" AL is that 1. I don't really like the way it looks compared to the TiBooks and the 12" and 17". And part of the whole reason I am getting an apple laptop is form factor.

and 2. form using the TiBook I feel like I'm trading off portability and screen real estate but not really getting the benefits of either. I used to lug around a Dell D800 which I did not enjoy but I beared with it so the 17" shouldn't be too bad in comparison. Yet I will have to commute to campus everyday so the 12" again might be better. I don't know, I'm still wishy washy here.

[d.fine]

Go for the 15" PB. It is the ideal in-between. I also am a graphic designer, and thought about some of the same issues. I think the 12" is cute, but has too small a screen to present work to a client or to comfortably work on for a longer period of time. I opted out of the 17" PB because the characteristic 'Portability' is a little lost there in my eyes. It's an awesome machine, but it's big and heavy if you plan on taking it many a place.
So I chose the 15" PB SuperDrive with everything, got 1GB DDR and a LaCie external Mobile FW HD to take along for efficiency and xtra space, and I've never been happier !! (it's my first mac ; )

[NYCFarmboy]

get ye to an apple store and look at the displays closely.

the 12" powerbook's screen has a very poor angle of view, and a sharp magenta ghosting which I don't believe the 15 or 17" model suffers from.

I guess its hit or miss on the 12" as some people love their lcd's (Apple I guess uses a few different vendors to supply the LCD's)....., do a search on this forum for other reviews, especially if you are going to be using the machine for graphics.

It is a wonderful laptop otherwise though. It does what I need it to do, but prefer using my old 500 mhz ibook for email/web surfing as the display in the nearly 3 year old ibook is MUCH nicer than this one.

[Randman]

Get the 15. You already said you'll be adding an external monitor. But more than anything else, get the ram maxed out.

[mishap]

Originally posted by NYCFarmboy:
get ye to an apple store and look at the displays closely.

the 12" powerbook's screen has a very poor angle of view, and a sharp magenta ghosting which I don't believe the 15 or 17" model suffers from.

So if you are going to be looking at your monitor at an angle all day... do not pick up the 12"


the truth is the 15" is best for palettes to utilize the extra screen space.