[ponginator]

hi,
i'm looking to buy an ibook, as a secondary system to my existing pc. i have a few questions, where can i find a good deal on one in canada? i know amazon has amazing promotions but they seem to apply to americans only. secondly, should i hold out and wait for the g4 ibooks to be released? there appears to be a significant speed difference between g3 and g4. am i correct?

any help would be appreciated.

cheeers!

[bleee]

Originally posted by ponginator:
hi,
i'm looking to buy an ibook, as a secondary system to my existing pc. i have a few questions, where can i find a good deal on one in canada? i know amazon has amazing promotions but they seem to apply to americans only. secondly, should i hold out and wait for the g4 ibooks to be released? there appears to be a significant speed difference between g3 and g4. am i correct?

any help would be appreciated.

cheeers!

Q: where can i find a good deal on one in canada?

A: Are you a student if so you can use the Educational discount, if not there really is none Apple keeps it's prices consistant unlike PC vendors. You can try CompuSmart or You local Authorized Apple Retailer. The prices should be exactly the same as the Apple Online store (www.apple.ca) if your paying more your getting ripped off.

Q: should i hold out and wait for the g4 ibooks to be released?

A: You can try but no one really knows when they are gonna release an iBook with a G4, there was a rumor that an iBook SE at MWNY but that didn't come true.

Q: there appears to be a significant speed difference between g3 and g4. am i correct?

A: Yes there is a significant difference between the g3 and g4.

Just a suggestion if you decide to buy an iBook from one pc switcher to another I strongly suggest the 700Mhz model. I haven't used it personally but coming from my pc the 600Mhz model is slow. You can use all the speed you can get

iBook is SWEET if I had the choice of buying 5 months later and getting the 700Mhz model I don't think I would have waited for the 700 with all the work I was able to get done with my iBook.

[khufuu]

Originally posted by ponginator:
hi,
i'm looking to buy an ibook, as a secondary system to my existing pc. i have a few questions, where can i find a good deal on one in canada? i know amazon has amazing promotions but they seem to apply to americans only. secondly, should i hold out and wait for the g4 ibooks to be released? there appears to be a significant speed difference between g3 and g4. am i correct?

any help would be appreciated.

cheeers!

I bought one about three weeks ago now. My only slight dissappointment has been speed. I run a P4 at work and now a G3 at home.

But... I got a Mac for a different user experience and, of course, the portability. Airport works very well and I am quite happy with it.

Prices don't change for Macs. Get the PC mentality out of your head - you're not in Kansas any more.

I got my machine at a local dealer (Westworld) and got charged exactly what was quoted on the apple.ca site. Paid about $370 for 512Mb additional RAM.

I had waited a long time for the G4iBook to come out and finally gave up after MWNY in July. They say the G3's run a lot cooler. Perhaps in MWSF this coming January you MIGHT see a G4 iBook. If it doesn't come out then, just buy a G3 and get it over with.

[bevo]

Im a fairly pc centric comp user as well considering the last mac I owned was in 96.

I went to my local compusa and managed to get a pretty good deal on the previous model they had in stock still. I got a ibook 600 with 15gb and dvd for 999 american brand new (they had it advertised at 1299). And they had that special on pny ram for $120 with $20 MIR.

If you're looking for the latest and greatest ibook, I dont really see you finding a spectacular deal. I think the best I had found on the ibook 700 combo was 1494 dollars. hardly anything to scream about.

The other option is a refurbished ibook. But I dont really like spending that much money on a refurb item.
To me the risk isn't justified for the cost savings, or lack thereof.

[SupahCoolX]

www.dealmac.com and the price trackers at www.pbcentral.com are great places to look for the best deals.

[Superchicken]

When the iBook goes G4 either the price will go up or the battery life will go down.
hehe

Acctually probably both.

The G3 is acctually pretty good, deppending on what you're doing, the new G3s are pretty much G4s without altivec units. Of course altivec can make a huge difference.
But the NEW 700Mhz and 600Mhz G3s are still pretty zippy, and under quartz extream you'll see significant emprovements. I'd say wai ttill OS X.2 starts shipping, we'll probably see a G4 in the iBook by MacWolrd SanFran this July, but Apple has it's reasons for keeping the G3s in the iBooks, battery life being one of them.
If you don't intend to be doing serious graphics work on it all the time, then I'd say the G3 will be fast enough for you. I use a G3 333Mhz... no money here And it's OK for web browsing and junk, and you'rs would probably be like 3 times as fast... so yeah.
Personally I hope by the time I can afford my iBook they'll have a G3 1Ghz!
hehe

But yeah buying now is good, make sure you get one with one of the Ati mobility cards though, don't buy used right now, Quartz Extream is gona be a BIG boost to your profomance, and the older iBooks don't support it.

[losta]

I'm both a Mac and PC user. I recently got an iBook to replace my 2 1/2 year old iMac DV SE. Of course it's way slower than my 1.7 GHz P4 desktop. But it's so quiet, light and elegant and the battery lasts much longer than my 700 mHz PIII laptop.

For general web surfing, roaming around the house with the airport card I find it really useful and fun and I am using it alot with iTunes transfering music to the iPod .

[ponginator]

a related question... how would a g4 system compare to a pc system in terms of speed?

example: would a 700 mhz G4 be equivalent to a 1.2 P4?? This is just an example.. i dunno if it's true or not. Any takers?

[ponginator]

Originally posted by losta:
I'm both a Mac and PC user. I recently got an iBook to replace my 2 1/2 year old iMac DV SE. Of course it's way slower than my 1.7 GHz P4 desktop. But it's so quiet, light and elegant and the battery lasts much longer than my 700 mHz PIII laptop.

For general web surfing, roaming around the house with the airport card I find it really useful and fun and I am using it alot with iTunes transfering music to the iPod .

why not just use your p3 700 laptop for stuff like surfin ghte web/roaming around the house if you have an existing laptop. i don't mean to be obtuse here. just curious why you purchased a mac? was it mostly for the user experience.. comments would be appreciated!

[losta]

I have always had a Mac (and before that and Apple II) I bought my first PC the day Windows 95 came out. I like the Mac experience! I like PCs too now but used to just use them because I had to for business.

My PC laptop has a 14" screen, an 802.11B card sticking out and is bigger and heavier than my iBook and also the battery on the PC lasts only about 2 hours. My iBook goes almost 4 and is so comfortable to hold and carry. Also the iBook runs much cooler, the PC gets so hot I can barely keep it on my lap 10 minutes.

The only complaint I have about my current Mac situation is that I do digital photography and there is more and better software available for viewing photos in RAW format and printing on the PC. I use Breeze Browser (and also Qimage for printing) It's not really a platform problem, it's just that no one has developed the software for Mac that is available on the PC. Also Canon who had a nice booth at MacWorld NY doesn't have an OS X RAW file converter yet.

[damosan]

Originally posted by ponginator:

why not just use your p3 700 laptop for stuff like surfin ghte web/roaming around the house if you have an existing laptop. i don't mean to be obtuse here. just curious why you purchased a mac? was it mostly for the user experience.. comments would be appreciated!

Can't speak for the original poster but I can answer this question.

I like Unix. All the machines in my house, with the exception of one running XP and another running ME have a type of Unix installed (NetBSD, Linux, and Solaris). They're networked and every one shares a (slow) link to the internet.

The thought of have having a commodity laptop running Unix (as well as Office) excited me to no end. I waited and waited until the 700mhz iBooks were available and bought one from my local Apple dealer.

I have PCs which smoke the iBook in *every* way except in four areas: Portability, Battery Life, Noise, and Looks.

The iBook is just a beauty of a machine. Nothing beats it. The battery lasts forever when banging away with Word, and 4.9 Lbs is hard to beat. Finally there is the (lack) of Noise. The iBook is *SILENT* which really helps when I'm concentrating on what I'm writing instead of the fan(s).

If want to play games or surf the web I use one of my PCs. If I want to write (documents, lisp, or java) I use the iBook.

Damo

[ponginator]

right on.. how is the g3 when it is used for photoshop?

another question. i've heard some ppl say the 14.1 screen is better some say the 12' screen is more natural. any advice anyone can give?

[khufuu]

Originally posted by ponginator:
a related question... how would a g4 system compare to a pc system in terms of speed?

example: would a 700 mhz G4 be equivalent to a 1.2 P4?? This is just an example.. i dunno if it's true or not. Any takers?

I was reading an article somewhere (sorry, don't remember where) and I'm sure they had taken a photoshop image and put it onto a 1.2 P4 and a 800 G4 and I think the the scores came out to pretty much a tie when doing most graphics stuff within Photoshop.

I don't really know about general day-to-day things however.

[losta]

I like the compact style of the 12" . I am not that young anymore and I usually need reading glasses. But I haven't really needed them on my 12" iBook.

I just got the photoshop 7 upgrade and it's much slower than on my PC but I'm using an iBook 500 with a 66Mhz bus though I do have 640 MB RAM.

[khufuu]

Originally posted by ponginator:
right on.. how is the g3 when it is used for photoshop?

another question. i've heard some ppl say the 14.1 screen is better some say the 12' screen is more natural. any advice anyone can give?

I think that the G3 will not run Photoshop all that well. You may be disappointed. Don't get me wrong, it would run it and do what it needs to do; I just think that would be waiting a bit more that what you might be used to. As I had said in another post, you don't get a iBook for it's blazing speed; you get it for the portability.

Speaking of which, I got the 12" because it's about the size of a piece of loose leaf paper and 3.5cm deep. I like that size. I think that it's good for most stuff. What I did was to go to a local dealer and play on one for about an hour. You'll get a better idea of what you want then.

[ponginator]

do you find the 16mb video card adequate? i know it's a step up from the 8mb card. any opinions? thanks again!!

[typoon]

Originally posted by losta:
I have always had a Mac (and before that and Apple II) I bought my first PC the day Windows 95 came out. I like the Mac experience! I like PCs too now but used to just use them because I had to for business.

My PC laptop has a 14" screen, an 802.11B card sticking out and is bigger and heavier than my iBook and also the battery on the PC lasts only about 2 hours. My iBook goes almost 4 and is so comfortable to hold and carry. Also the iBook runs much cooler, the PC gets so hot I can barely keep it on my lap 10 minutes.

The only complaint I have about my current Mac situation is that I do digital photography and there is more and better software available for viewing photos in RAW format and printing on the PC. I use Breeze Browser (and also Qimage for printing) It's not really a platform problem, it's just that no one has developed the software for Mac that is available on the PC. Also Canon who had a nice booth at MacWorld NY doesn't have an OS X RAW file converter yet.

For photos why not use iPhoto in combination with newly released Photoshop Elements 2.0. or just photoshop elements then you can manipulate them and send them to any PC

[losta]

I have PhotoShop 7 both Mac and PC versions but neither will recognize Canon RAW image files (highest quality images). That's why I use Breeze Browser on the PC. Canon has a RAW image converter but it's not OS X native.

[khufuu]

Originally posted by ponginator:
do you find the 16mb video card adequate? i know it's a step up from the 8mb card. any opinions? thanks again!!

Sorry...

That's just not something I've ever had to worry about so I've never compared the differences between different cards.

Perhaps someone else can comment.....

[Hiramw]

Originally posted by losta:
I have PhotoShop 7 both Mac and PC versions but neither will recognize Canon RAW image files (highest quality images). That's why I use Breeze Browser on the PC. Canon has a RAW image converter but it's not OS X native.

Maybe you have already tried this, but in case you have not.

GraphicConverter might do what you need.

http://lemkesoft.com/gcdownload_us.html

Hiram

[ponginator]

i plan on using word processors, surfing the internet, doing the occasional python scripting, photoshop, and running cubase.

do you reckon that an ibook should suffice? ti notebooks, although nice, are a little out of my price range at the moment.

opinions please. THANKS a million

[Commodus]

For your uses, you'd probably be best off getting an iBook and then just maxing out its RAM (640 MB at the moment). The only demanding app you use is Photoshop, and even then an iBook 700 should handle that well enough.

The video chipset in the current iBooks (the base 600 MHz CD-ROM model and any of the 700s) is definitely an improvement on that of previous models. It's the first iBook that can run Quartz Extreme (otherwise you use the normal Quartz), so the OS at least would seem a lot quicker. Just don't expect to be running the latest and greatest games on it.