[Droo]

hello,

My partner is going into her final year at university and requires a laptop to complete her disertation on.

She's never really been a frequent PC user so i believe now's a good time for her to start using a mac, also, i believe it would suit her much more than a cheap pc laptop.

Personally, My only dealings with mac's come with my work - video editing - where i've been using final cut pro for a few years now. Whereas at home I still have a PC to surf, game and email on. therefore i've always considered the mac to be more of my "work computer" and the pc "leisure".

For this reason im thinking it would also suit her to have an IBOOK for her work computer and since all she'll use it for is research, internet, email, msn etc it should do her fine.

One thing im not particularly savvy on is MAC spec's, for FCP I was using a dual proccessor G5 and basically all i knew was it was top of the range. Im thinking she'll only need a G3 Ibook for what she requires off it, am I correct?

I'll overview. She needs:

WORD
POWERPOINT
EXCELL
MSN Messenger
A good Browser
Wifi support

also, the ability to back up word / powerpoint / excell documents to disk/cd so she can continue them on a pc - is this possible?


So, im thinking the new style ibook g3, sounds like a good spec? also, where would be the best place to buy one new or used for a reasonable price - im based in Ireland.


Many thanks MACNN!


David Woods.

[drive-thru]

Hi.
The new iBooks have G4 processors.
All your partner would need is a G3 iBook (if you can get one second-hand), say around 800MHz. To give you an idea of performance, I run iTunes (mp3 jukebox), Safari (web browser) and Adium (IM client) on my 800MHz G3 without any problem at all, and can even throw Photoshop or Illustrator into thee mix without noticing much speed loss.

If you are looking to buy new from Apple, the iBook bottom-end iBook (12" 1GHz G4) would be more than sufficient for her needs. It retails at $1099 (are you in the US?)

To make using the computer a bit more enjoyable I would put in some extra RAM (buy from Crucial, Apple is expensive for RAM) to bring the iBook up the around 512/640MB. This will make the whole OS seem more responsive and will allow her to run multiple applications simultaneously without a problem.

If you have any more questions do hesitate to ask here.
(Oh and it's apparently my duty to inform you that it's Mac, not MAC, and iBook, not IBOOK, and MacNN, not MACNN.)

[drive-thru]

And to answer some of your other questions, the info on the iBook can be found at: http://www.apple.com/ibook/ and you can go to the Apple Store from that page to check prices for different configurations.

-You can get Microsoft Office for Mac, there's an educational version, which I believe is exactly the same as the regular version just cheaper. This will give you Word, Excel, PowerPoint etc which all work with files created on PC versions of the same apps.
-MSN messenger is a free download.
-Apple's built-in browser (Safari) is excellent, there's also Internet Explorer (built-in as well) if you like that sort of thing.
-You can buy an Airport Extreme card (802.11g) with the iBook. Go t the Apple Store online to find out prices.
-All new iBooks come with at least a Combo drive (CD-RW/DVD in one drive) and you can plug in a FireWire hard drive for backing up, or a USB Flash Drive or even get a USB floppy drive.

Just noticed you're in Ireland, go to http://www.apple.com/uk/ - click on "Store" at the top and there's an Irish Store which will tell you prices.