[hotshot]

Hello,

I've been lurking about for several weeks now and I decided I wanted to post to get some feedback.

I’m a 1st year uni student majoring in Accounting.

I’ve been a PC user for 15 or more years, but I have had some Mac experience.

I currently using a laptop – Pentium 4 m 1.7Ghz, 768DDR RAM, 30 GIG HDD, Geforce 2 Go, 8x DVDROM, 14” screen. It’s about 3 Kgs (~6.6lbs) it gets about 2 hours on a full charge. This laptop is not mine but my dads.

I live in Australia and the educational discount of the 12” iBook is great value and all the new updates to the iBook line make it a great all round package. At the end of the month Apple will stop the current 3 year warranty to change it to only 1 year warranty on educational discounts (Australia only, I'm not sure about other countries), so I must make a decision relatively quickly. Although I have enough money for the laptop I don’t want to jump into anything without first researching thoroughly. The $1500AUD price tag may not mean much to some but it does to me.

My main concerns are heat.

I’ve read a lot about this laptop and from what I’ve gathered I came to the following conclusions:

The good – It very portable, light, fast, has a slot loading DVD/CDR combo, good dedicated graphics card, bright screen, good battery performance, keyboard is good, a very nice OS, with recent updates it makes it a great bang for your buck laptop.

The bad- heat heat and heat – heat on the left palm

The ugly- Combo drive is a bit noisy, display has poor response rate and average viewing angles(but being a portable device you can’t expect much)

The only problems I see in this laptop is heat. From what I’ve read, the hard disk drive is located under the left palm rest which gives out quite a bit of heat which can become quite uncomfortable.

In the laptop I’m currently using I actually upgraded the memory and I was wondering if I could reuse the memory in the iBook. Currently I have this memory (http://www.geilusa.com/proddetail.asp?linenumber=32) and the specifications seem to match fine.

The only other problem I have with getting this laptop is being that I have access to my dad’s laptop which can perform all the functions I need. And can I justify the purchase especially since my Uni course is business and not computer science?

The most important thing is - why do I want it? Well I want to be able to do my homework (especially Law) obviously, I want something portable to take and carry around and with good battery life. I will not be gaming at all.

You’re probably thinking I’ve over analysing the situation but that’s just me. I’m sorry this turned out to be so long but any comments and/or suggestions are very welcome.

[iREZ]

The iBook doesn't really have a heat issue, at least in my opinion. If anything it gets as warm as every other plastic notebook out there. I love the fact that the iBook has a long battery time, and better Airport signal as compared to the 12" PB. If you really want an iBook then by all means go for it, you will not be dissapointed.

[hotshot]

Thank you for your reply iREZ!

[namen]

I've had my G4 iBook for about 2 weeks now and the only problem I have with it is the fact that the palm rest creaks a bit on the left side (the side where the warm HD is). This is probably because they left room for the HD to breathe a bit and doesn't affect performance or it's overall sturdiness in any way.

Haven't had a problem with heat yet, and I often use my ibook on my bed which does cause it to warm up a bit. Otherwise to keep the temperature down, put down a textbook or something else hard and flat underneath your ibook so it can get good air circulation. Oh and don't block the openings on the sides.

[wataru]

I don't feel that the heat produced by my 12" iBook G4 is a problem.

[SupahCoolX]

On the bright side, the heat can't be any worse than the Powerbook 5300!*
iBooks are fine, though. The heat is NOT by any means a deal-breaker. Don't worry about it.


*A laptop Apple made a few years ago that had some minor problems with batteries bursting into flames. Though the "legend" is an exaggeration of reality.

[brettcamp]

It's a non issue. You may be thinking about heat reports of the first version of the 12" Powerbook, some of which reportedly could get pretty toasty. But I've never heard any complaints about the iBook. I have a brand new 12" G4 iBook, and just added a 512 RAM chip, and have yet to encounter any noticeable heat, even when burning CDs and running several apps. You will notice some heat when the batteries have run down and it's recharging through the AC, but it abates as soon as it reaches a full charge, and, in my experience, never gets more than a bit warm. I absolutely love this computer -- a real jump over my old G3 iBook, especially the keyboard.

[nJm]

I have had no issues at all with using my 12" 1Ghz G4 iBook at Monash Uni (Melbourne, Aus). I take it everywhere. Heat isn't an issue. The only time it has got really hot was while it was running off the power adaptor, and I was encoding a DVD to MP4 on the run to the HD. In normal uni use (eg not playing 3d games or burning cds) running off the battery it stays really cool. Sure it gets a little warm, but no where near as warm as some PC laptops I've used.

I prefer having a mac laptop for a few reasons. One, the battery life is fantastic. Airport is easy to setup. Having a Location manager for network settings. I can set up completely different TCP/IP configs for wireless network, including proxie servers, file sharing and firewalls which can be switched by chosing the 'Location' you are at from the Apple Menu. SO EASY!!!! Another thing I prefer is the sleep function. Much faster and more reliable than a PC laptop.

For uni life I find my iBook perfect. I've convinced a few long-time PC using friends to get one now before they end the 3 year warranty on student purchases.

[moep]

I agree, the iBook is awesome. I've been using PCs for all my life, beeing a complete overclocked and watercooled gaming-nut.
I never saw or used a mac before.

However, when I was in the market for a Laptop (mainly for school), I stumbled across the 12" iBook. I was looking for a small "Sub-ish" Notebook and couldn't find any notebook that could match the 12" iBook without spending a fortune. When i ordered it, i looked at it as sort of a "Gimmick". I thought that I wouldn't do anything but typing on it anyway, so a Apple should be good enough for it.

When it arrived, it took some time to get used to OSX. It took me a week or so to get used to OSX... after that I never powered on my 4000$ (dual Xeon at 3.6, Radeon 9800pro, 1 gb ram, blahblahblah) again... I ended up in selling the PC one month after I bought my iBook.

The instant sleep / wakeup mode is astonishing... while others are still booting their Windoze Laptops, my iBook was up and typing. Battery Life is incredible, too. And last but not least, portability... the iBook is about the same size of a DIN A4 Sheet, just a tad thicker.
Also, it's virtually silent. When I switched it on for the first time, I thought there HAS to something wrong with it... never saw/heard of a PC that can be 100% silent when it's on.

After 8 months, my iBook is still my primary computer and going strong.
The only thing I regret is that I haven't got a BTO machine right away (bigger HD, bluetooth, airport extreme - although I've bought a airport extreme card 2 months after i bought the ibook, WLAN rocks).

I'm planing an upgrade for this year - either a G5 or a G5 Powerbook, although I'm not sure if one of those things will still show up this year.
The simple reason for this is that the iBook was never supposed to be my main machine, thus I'm starving for a bigger HD and a bigger screen. I could care less about the extra 100%+ processor speed, though... the 800 Mhz G4 is plenty for 95% of the stuff I'm doing.

I do not find heat to be an issue, unless I'm doing a ton of processor intensive work... it does get pretty hot when I'm rendering videos or such, but during normal load (Safari, iTunes, Bittorrent, MS Word... all at once) it stays perfectly cool.

I can't think of ever switching back to PCs again. I still have to mess a few PCs in our company, but everytime I fix them, it reminds me of how lucky I am with my iBook.

Sorry for the rave, but that's just how it is.

PS: your ram should do just fine. maxing it out is a no-brainer, it's gives OSX a huge performance boost all around.

[new_apple]

I've been using my iBook (my first Mac!) for the last week. The heat has not been an issue at all. Actually I haven't thought about before I read your topic. Too busy enjoying this incredible machine I guess...

[Rev-O]

I've an 800MHz iBook G4 that I picked up at the Panther release. I use it a bunch, tho it isn't my only Apple. Only time I've noticed a heat issue is when I'm sitting in bed with the iBook propped on my knees playing games. And even then it's not bad.

Second the BTO suggestion. For no other reason than to get a bigger HD. Bluetooth might be nice too.

[hotshot]

Thanks for all your replies

I'm researching a bit deeper now and I came across this thread at Mac Rumors:Forum (http://forums.macrumors.com/showthre...light=ibook+g4)

The thread talks about the key's letters and numbers wearing out and not due to over abuse or long period of time. This really concerns me not because I can't type but if a year or two I decide to sell it, it would put buyers right off.

I can't tell if this was due to a bad batch, but I'm wondering if people have experience keys fading with only light typing.

Thanks

[wataru]

Originally posted by hotshot:
The thread talks about the key's letters and numbers wearing out and not due to over abuse or long period of time. This really concerns me not because I can't type but if a year or two I decide to sell it, it would put buyers right off.

I can't tell if this was due to a bad batch, but I'm wondering if people have experience keys fading with only light typing.

Thanks

I've had that exact same problem. I solve it by swapping keys with demo iBooks at the university store (shhhh don't tell!).