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Spartan · Oct 31, 2005, 08:15 AM

Hey people.

I've decided to go with the iBook, and I'm now stumped on which iBook to get! I want my iBook to play games decently or atleast, well enough so that I can play it. (games like Halo and Fable)

I like the 14" because it's .9GHz faster, and the fact the screen is bigger (although I hear it's blurred and/or stretched?), plus the DVD burning is awesome

Although I like the 12" because it's £200 less, is lighter and let's face it, .9GHz is hardly anything.

I'm going for the 1.5GB RAM, 100GB HD but I can't decide which size to get.

EDIT: Uhh... no idea why it posted it twice. The other post is screwed up o_O;; Best to ignore it ahaha.

Randman · Oct 31, 2005, 08:27 AM

The 12 is better value right now.

buffswin · Oct 31, 2005, 08:30 AM

Were you looking for a response?

It is all really a matter of your personal taste.

The 12" is smaller, doesn't have the DVD burning capability, and has a rather dim screen.

The 14" is bigger, does have DVD burning capability, has a brighter screen, but the screen resolution on the 14" iBook is the same as on the 12" iBook- so that means that the screen real estate is just stretched out some and the pixels are further apart, and letters and things have spaces inside them for the spaces between the pixels, making things look a little blurry.

I, personally, would go with the 12", simply because it is ultra portable. But I just can't seem to get over the horrible screen to pull the trigger.

mdc · Oct 31, 2005, 01:31 PM

at the end of the day it is up to you. regardless of whether randman and i prefer the 12" or buffswin prefers the 14" but dislikes the 12" screen. you're the one who is going to have to sit with it on your lap until you sell it. go to the apple store and play with both of them. look at both of their screens. play with the same application on both, record speeds, keep in mind you'll be upgrading the memory (so it'll be speedier than the ones in the apple store). you *will* max out the memory

personally, i do not like the size of the 14" and that is the sole reason i wouldn't buy it. if i was to get something bigger than a 12" it would be a 15" powerbook.
i really liked my 12" ibook when i owned it. i did not find anything wrong with the screen. dvd burning is nice, but you can always buy an external firewire dvd burner, and still have a combo drive inside the ibook.

my flat mate just bought a 12" ibook and he ran the image spanning hack on it and uses it to extend his desktop to a 19" crt monitor in his room.

Indohottie · Oct 31, 2005, 01:40 PM

if you major hold up is a dvd burner.. you can always get an external...

I would personally go with the 12 much more portable..

Indohottie · Oct 31, 2005, 01:40 PM

if you major hold up is a dvd burner.. you can always get an external...

I would personally go with the 12 much more portable..

Indohottie · Oct 31, 2005, 01:41 PM

if you major hold up is a dvd burner.. you can always get an external...

I would personally go with the 12 much more portable..

Indohottie · Oct 31, 2005, 01:41 PM

if you major hold up is a dvd burner.. you can always get an external...

I would personally go with the 12 much more portable..

cmeisenzahl · Oct 31, 2005, 01:49 PM

If it's a second machine, go for portability and price w/ the 12". If it's a desktop replacement go 14"

Chris

cmeisenzahl · Oct 31, 2005, 01:51 PM

If it's a second machine, go for portability and price w/ the 12". If it's a desktop replacement go 14"

Chris

cmeisenzahl · Oct 31, 2005, 01:51 PM

If it's a second machine, go for portability and price w/ the 12". If it's a desktop replacement go 14"

Chris

mduell · Oct 31, 2005, 06:28 PM

12"!
The 14" gives you more inches, but not any more usable space. The 12" is also a pound lighter and a few hundred cheaper.

njwidmann · Oct 31, 2005, 08:35 PM

the ibook 14" is pretty heavy and bulky compared to the 12" i would go with the 12"

mavherzog · Oct 31, 2005, 08:48 PM

Originally Posted by Indohottie

if you major hold up is a dvd burner.. you can always get an external...

I would personally go with the 12 much more portable..

Plus, you could always swap out the combo drive with a superdrive.

jaimzedup · Nov 1, 2005, 10:56 AM

for playing games, i'd recommend the 14

amazing · Nov 2, 2005, 03:29 PM

The 2 main questions are:

1. how portable do you want your laptop to be?

2. how do your eyes react to the 14" LCD? If you open the same doc on both a 12" and a 14" (find some "Read Me"), does the type look blurry on the 14"? I know that I get significant eye fatigue on a 14", so that's one LCD that I'd never choose to use for extended periods.

A subset of the second question is whether you have to squint or wear glasses to read the type on the 12". If so, the 14" is the lesser of 2 evils.

Frankly, if you're looking at a new 14", then you should instead look at the refurbs in the Apple Store, because there's some great prices on refurbed 15" PBs.

Taltoz · Nov 4, 2005, 03:36 PM

Sorry to try and hijack this thread but I cannot start a new one right now.

I should be recieving my new 12" ibook any minute now and I was wondering if the experts on this forum could offer some advice for a new switcher. This is my first mac but I am a fairly heavy power user in the windows world (MCSE and all that junk ;-)). I will be using this as my primary machine at home (I will still have my work laptop for the windows stuff if I have to use it) so I want to make sure it can perform. I am planning on upgrading the ram but since there is a good price difference between the 512 and 1gb sticks I thought I would ask your experience on whether that extra 512 (1gb total vs 1.5gb total) was worth the almost $100 price difference. Thanks in advance for the help.

Taltoz

harrisjamieh · Nov 4, 2005, 04:31 PM

Well i cant comment on the high amounts of RAM, but I can say that on my last generation iBook that comes with 256 RAM, after upgrading it to 512mb, i noticed a very, very significant speed increase - once the main bios was up on the mac, it took about a quater of the time to actually 'load into' OS X, so one would expect even though the machine would run fast on 1 gig, it would run significantly faster with 1.5 gig. Also the hard drive in the iBooks are only 4200 RPM - aka slow, so the more RAM, the less the system has to access the hard drive, making it much quicker.

What would you be using your iBook for? audio/video editing? or just web surfing, emailing and word stuff? - obviously if its the latter then RAM is not so important as if the first were true.

harrisjamieh · Nov 4, 2005, 04:31 PM

Well i cant comment on the high amounts of RAM, but I can say that on my last generation iBook that comes with 256 RAM, after upgrading it to 512mb, i noticed a very, very significant speed increase - once the main bios was up on the mac, it took about a quater of the time to actually 'load into' OS X, so one would expect even though the machine would run fast on 1 gig, it would run significantly faster with 1.5 gig. Also the hard drive in the iBooks are only 4200 RPM - aka slow, so the more RAM, the less the system has to access the hard drive, making it much quicker.

What would you be using your iBook for? audio/video editing? or just web surfing, emailing and word stuff? - obviously if its the latter then RAM is not so important as if the first were true.

harrisjamieh · Nov 4, 2005, 04:32 PM

Edit: Ahhh! Damn You Double Posts!

Taltoz · Nov 4, 2005, 04:37 PM

Well my usage is pretty much all over the place depending on what I am into at the time. I am hoping to be able to do some audio editing and mabe some basic video editing. Also, I will be converting video files for my ipod and psp.Thanks again for the help.

b12yan12 · Nov 4, 2005, 04:37 PM

go with 12

harrisjamieh · Nov 5, 2005, 03:34 AM

Originally Posted by Taltoz

Well my usage is pretty much all over the place depending on what I am into at the time. I am hoping to be able to do some audio editing and mabe some basic video editing. Also, I will be converting video files for my ipod and psp.Thanks again for the help.

In that case i would go for the full out 1.5 GB of RAM if you can afford it, as i think you will really appreciate it when doing some of the audio and video work you mentioned.

bear in mind that if you only upgrade to 1 GB, then decide you want to go all the way up to 1.5, you will have to dispose of the 512 MB stick you purchased and replace it with a 1 GB, as the iBook only has a single RAM slot, so if you think you would ever upgrade to 1.5 GB, doing it right away would be the more economical thing to do