[jasonlustig]

So a couple of months ago, my old laptop (an ancient compaq) died on me. The hard drive just sort of quit, I was very lucky that I had just done a backup a couple of weeks before and hadn't lost that much work. :-D Anyway I had planned on getting a mac for the upcoming school year anyway, so I wasn't as angry as I should have been... so anyway, I have decided (I think) that I want to get the 15" powerbook with the superdrive. I would get the 14" ibook, but after upgrading it to what I would want (with the extra memory and the bigger hard drive), it's almost the same price as the powerbook (with the edu discount) and I could use things like DVI to be able to hook up the pb to the big-screen TVs in the lounges at school, as well as the slightly larger screen and other goodies. I want it to last me a good 5-6 years (for various reasons I don't see myself being able to, or even needing, a new computer until at least a few years after i graduate)

I just have a couple of questions-

1. I am pretty sure that I'll be fine with the 80G hd... but I just want to do the math and see how much free space I'll have after putting on all my music, installing ms office, etc. The one thing I don't know is how much space everything takes up when you get the computer... how much space does all the pre-installed software (OSX, ilife, etc.) take up?

2. PB updates - if they are going to be updating the PB before september, I'd wait. But I don't see it happening until the paris expo, which is after school starts for almost everyone (which makes it a really dumb move for apple.........). Anyway if they aren't going to update it, I might as well get it now so that I have time to get everything set up for school, and then I can also get work done outside when it's nice out instead of being cramped up inside when I want to work on the computer.

Jason

[typerlover]

I just got a 15" two days ago. The 80gb harddrive had about 67gigs left free after all preinstalled options out of the box. I'm down to 40 gigs after transferring only some of my music and other stuff. Either way, 80gb or 100gb will not be enough so don't bother paying the extra for the 20 gigs. Save the cash and buy a huge external firewire drive. I had a 160gb in my pc and that wasn't enough so maybe 250 plus the internal 80 ought to do the trick

[jasonlustig]

Sweet, 80G should be enough (I have something like 10 gigs of music, and my old computer's HD was 20G so my files should fit on it as well). Personally I don't see what I would need 160G or something like that for, unless all I did was download movies and so on.

Also I was wondering- I have a pretty old standard VGA monitor, that is currently hooked up to my old dell that I've been using since my laptop died. I should be able to hook the PB up to it, right?

EDIT: Also I forgot to ask- what are some good (but still relatively cheap, the computer already costs a pretty penny ) screen protectors? I want to keep the screen in good condition and even if some idiot touches it, a protector would make sure that it stays OK.

Jason

[jokarak]

You can easily connect the PB to a VGA monitor w/ a DVI to VGA adaptor, but for the life of me I can't recall whether the PB comes w/ one (if it doesn't, it should not cost more than 20 bucks).