[Spidey79]

Hey guys after reading all of the threads in this ibook forum I have decided to buy an Ibook and forgoe a powerbook. I realize that as a college student with a budget, I should purchase an ibook instead of forking over 2500 for powerbook. I still have my wintel maching, a 512 ddr400, p 4 3.0, 160 maxtor hd, 200 gb external hd, 8X DVD-rw, DVD-Rom, ati 9550 radeon, sweet case, microsoft Optical Desktop. So my big thing is can I watch anime on it avi files to be more specific. With this setup, I don't feel a need for a powerbook yet. I just need it to type stuff and for school. This is an itnroduction to the mac experience and I do not want to spend too much money and not like it. If I do like it, then I can give this ibook to my sis and Ican get a 15in powerbook.. (muahahaha) . My PeeCee will allow me to play games and do video authoring with Adobe. But all in all, is this a wise decision? Your imput will help a lot. What do you guys think of the ibook in general. Also if I buy it stock and then later upgrade it myself like the ram, will it void the warranty? One last quetion, the ibook is 899 at Amazon after the 100 dollar rebate, and 950 at my college plus tax.. which one should I go for? Thank you!!

[TimothyJay]

Wow, we think alike =]

I thought the same way. I already have pretty decent desktop setup, powerful enough to do just about anything I can think of, so I bought an iBook for portability. I must say, I was impressed by it. For graphics stuff, such as Adobe Creative Suite, it ran fine without a hitch with 768mb ram. If you plan to use it for video editing, you might want to upgrade it to an extra 1gb of ram. I think the iBook may be able to handle video editing, but it wouldn't be as fast or efficient (I would think) as your desktop setup would.

As far as I know, upgrading the ram yourself would not void the warranty. Apple even have guides on their website for upgrade-yourself instructions.

I'd say go for the one with the rebate. If you were to buy it at your college with tax, you'd be paying roughly the same thing, except the one at Amazon has a 100 rebate.

[D'Espice]

The 12" iBook will be great for what you'll be doing. Great battery life (longer than PowerBooks), great keyboard and silent. Make sure to add another 256MB of RAM to it and you'll be fine.

[artaxerxes]

I have the 12" iBook and a AMD-Win2k desktop for the CS:Sauce.

Its an ideal combination, financially.

I survived admirably on the iBook's 256 RAM for a year (light duties + some intensive MATLAB) and I am only upgrading for TIGER, which will chuckle softly at the 256. Get the largest hard drive...

The ultraportability is just sweet - massive battery life and its so light compared to my old Compaq 15.1" (obviously)

[Briareus]

I got my iBook 12" during the last Amazon rebate blitz ($850 after rebate). I have a dual 2 Ghz G5 (graphics, gaming, and audio workstation) and just wanted a satellite for when I was out of town - although it's fun to sit in front of the TV and post here from the La-z-boy

It's bumped to 768 MB and is running Tiger nicely. Although I mainly use it for communications and web page editing on the road, it's good to know that Adobe CS will run OK on it (I have yet to upgrade from the design collection). I'll stay away from running major computation-heavy stuff on it (Digital Performer, ArtMatic, etc), though.