[novocain]

Now I'm not sure whether I should by 1.33G or 1.5G.

I can upgrade the 1.33G's memory and hard drive. then its difference to 1.5G is mainly the superdrive and backlit.......and the price.

so could anyone tell whther the supredrive and backlit are so useful? I'm a graduate student, I will use the laptop to write papers, run some scientific software such as matlab, design website, listen to musics, and watch movie. so, maybe i don't need superdrive or backlit? this will save me some money.

Thank you!

[Randman]

Welcome aboard. If you search through the PowerBook forum, you'll find plenty of other threads on this very subject. Should be able to find what you need.

[novocain]

thank you

i know as a newbie i should search the old posts firstly....but I have tried, and it's not easy to find out the information I need....so i wrote a new post hoping I can get useful information easier....

any suggestion will be great, thank you

[fisherKing]

it's your choice:
do u need a dvd burner? if not, you can at least burn cds.
the backlight is nice (wish my 12" had it!), but again...choice.

the speed difference will not be so great.
figure your budget, your needs...and buy something.

you'll get your work done (and have fun)

[alpha rays max]

I just purchased the 1.33 GHz Combo Drive PowerBook last night. I'd seriously considered the Superdrive model, but after giving it some thought... I decided it wasn't worth the $500 difference for my uses.

The speed difference is negligible. RAM is not terribly expensive, so upgrading that isn't a big deal. The keyboard backlighting is certainly cool, but if you can touch-type, there's really no reason to be able to see the keyboard in the dark... it's never presented itself as a problem for me, anyway. The DVD burner is really the only compelling feature IMHO, but it's definitely not worth the premium. Then again, I can't see myself burning very many DVDs anyway... YMMV.

[wuzup101]

the 1.33 should definitely be fast enough for anything you can throw at it in the notebook world. If you were doing anything that the 1.33 would suck at chances are you would need a dual G5 tower anyway. The 1.5ghz only adds a little bit of omph. However there are some key features that the 1.5 does have over the 1.33 in the 15" realm: 80gig hdd instead of 60 standard (makes the upgrade to the 5400rpm drive half the cost), 128mb vram avaliable, 512mb system ram standard (vs 256), backlit keyboard (very nice but not essential), super drive (which can be dropped to save money like I did). If you don't have to burn DVDs you may still consier going with the faster machine and dropping it (saving you along the lines of $180 in the process). Either way you go you'll be happy with eather machine. They are both very solid even for the price (which really isn't that high considering that you get a good deal of power comparable to most very high end PC lappies of the same form factor which are in the same price range).

[an0therdumbsn]

I got my powerbook during the end of the 1.25 era and went with a top of the line 1.25 and it runs perfect.
I have yet to see it lag using photoshop, design , itunes, imovie, or any office programs.
I really think that a person that needs 1.5 in a laptop would probably be better suited at a good desktop.
Honestly just go for pimped out top of the line 1.33 and youll be fine.

[novocain]

thank you all

1.33G and upgrade to 512Mb memory and 80Gb 5400rpm hard drive will cost me $2002
1.5G and drop superdrive will cost me $2119(can't drop backlit, the 80Gb hard drive is 4200rpm)

so, it seems 1.33G is a better choice?

I will go to my university this weekend, and will buy my first powerbook there (thus I can get 3 years' warranty and more preinstalled software ). wow, I'm excited