[Phat Bastard]

I'm thinking about selling my trusty G4-400 Powerbook (which I love dearly!), in which I have 768 MB RAM, and buying a G3-800 iBook, 12" screen, which I'd upgrade to 640 MB RAM. I'm weighing the pluses and minuses of switching and here's what it boils down to:

Pluses:
-faster system (according to Xbench stats)
-bigger HD (3 times larger)
-built-in CD-RW
-better graphics capability
-better Airport reception (just thought of that one...cool!!)
-smaller, easier to transport and carry
-I think it's really cute looking!

Minuses:
-less RAM
-smaller screen
-smaller screen
-smaller screen.

So yeah, its obvious what is holding me back, and I need some help trying to decide...a couple friends of mine have iBooks with the 12" screen and I've obviously noticed its smaller than my Powerbook's, but I haven't decided if it's TOO small.

I'm a grad student, basically I use my laptop for email, surfing, typing up documents, telnet/command line functions when I'm in the lab, some molecular graphics stuff (12" would be fine for this though), music, killing time on the train commute home.

Opinions? Thanks in advance!!

[xtal]

I think that provided you can get over minuses 2, 3 and 4, you should have no problem whatsoever. I'm extremely happy with my new iBook 800, which I'm lovingly typing on now.

-Nick

P.S. Being Phat's buddy, my iBook 800 may be the one prompting this possible switch.

[bleee]

Originally posted by Phat Bastard:
I'm thinking about selling my trusty G4-400 Powerbook (which I love dearly!), in which I have 768 MB RAM, and buying a G3-800 iBook, 12" screen, which I'd upgrade to 640 MB RAM. I'm weighing the pluses and minuses of switching and here's what it boils down to:

Pluses:
-faster system (according to Xbench stats)
-bigger HD (3 times larger)
-built-in CD-RW
-better graphics capability
-better Airport reception (just thought of that one...cool!!)
-smaller, easier to transport and carry
-I think it's really cute looking!

Minuses:
-less RAM
-smaller screen
-smaller screen
-smaller screen.

So yeah, its obvious what is holding me back, and I need some help trying to decide...a couple friends of mine have iBooks with the 12" screen and I've obviously noticed its smaller than my Powerbook's, but I haven't decided if it's TOO small.

I'm a grad student, basically I use my laptop for email, surfing, typing up documents, telnet/command line functions when I'm in the lab, some molecular graphics stuff (12" would be fine for this though), music, killing time on the train commute home.

Opinions? Thanks in advance!!

I'm on an iBook late 2001 600Mhz with 640MB of ram, we rented a G4 400 TiBook at work recently for a month. I was so jealous of the screen it's huge compaired to the iBook screen. We rented it for a trade show to do video editing at the show. At times the huge screen in the TiBook is very nice but for carrying around I'm not so sure about. I commute everyday and my iBook goes where ever I go. Oh dosen't the TiBook support monitor spanning and higher rez monitor spanning as well?

[Nick Ahlfs]

Why not get the 14" screen?

[Milo Waye]

Originally posted by Phat Bastard:
I'm thinking about selling my trusty G4-400 Powerbook (which I love dearly!), in which I have 768 MB RAM, and buying a G3-800 iBook, 12" screen, which I'd upgrade to 640 MB RAM. I'm weighing the pluses and minuses of switching and here's what it boils down to:

Pluses:
-faster system (according to Xbench stats)
-bigger HD (3 times larger)
-built-in CD-RW
-better graphics capability
-better Airport reception (just thought of that one...cool!!)
-smaller, easier to transport and carry
-I think it's really cute looking!

Minuses:
-less RAM
-smaller screen
-smaller screen
-smaller screen.

So yeah, its obvious what is holding me back, and I need some help trying to decide...a couple friends of mine have iBooks with the 12" screen and I've obviously noticed its smaller than my Powerbook's, but I haven't decided if it's TOO small.

I'm a grad student, basically I use my laptop for email, surfing, typing up documents, telnet/command line functions when I'm in the lab, some molecular graphics stuff (12" would be fine for this though), music, killing time on the train commute home.

Opinions? Thanks in advance!!

Phat B,

Sounds like you've made up your mind Albeit smaller I think you'll find looking at the iBook screen a BIG pleasure over what you have. As for it's size well that's relative. Compared to the 10" screen on the PB 2400 which is what I just gave up, it's LARGE.

[fibroptikl]

I too just bought my iBook G3 800/640MB/30GB/12.1 and I love it. It's a great laptop for the money.

What's more interesting is that I am a hardcore PC user; and I decided to get one because it offers more than the laptop I wanted (Dell Inspiron 4150), and is $500 cheaper in the end. OS X.2 is a nice operating system, the feature set here is good, and well - 640MB of RAM, ATI Radeon 7500 32MB graphics, and a nice 12.1" Display are all nice.

Needless to say, you should be fine with the ibook.

besides, it looks nice.

[Phat Bastard]

I wouldn't get the 14" screen, it just doesn't look good on the iBook. It makes it look clunky. And no added resolution out of the 14" screen is a bummer.

It just occurred to me that I'm using my Powerbook's 15.2" screen at 1152x768--essentially the same screen resolution as the iBook's 12" screen at 1024x768. I'm only gaining those 128 pixels on my Powerbook screen, and that translates into what, the size of the clock on my menu bar? Big deal.

If I was using one of the newer Powerbooks, then I could complain about losing "usable screen real estate" in switching from 1280x1024 to 1024x768. So it seems I have solved my own problem.

I first started thinking about this when I noticed people on eBay were managing to snag good prices for their Powerbooks...and when you got your iBook 800, xtal. What a sweet machine..

[iomatic]

It's not quite 128 pixels; in fact it's a 128-pixel _column_, which is considerably more on the PowerBook. Anyway, I'm a previous 500MHz PowerBook owner who's switched to my always-with-me iBook 800. Just get more RAM, and you won't be disappointed. If it's not your primary machine, I don't think you'll be totally let down by the screen real estate. The iBook is definitely speedier, by a large margin. The PowerBook sale did, however, retain quite a bit of value and "paid" for my upgrade. Quite satisfied.

Originally posted by Phat Bastard:
I wouldn't get the 14" screen, it just doesn't look good on the iBook. It makes it look clunky. And no added resolution out of the 14" screen is a bummer.

It just occurred to me that I'm using my Powerbook's 15.2" screen at 1152x768--essentially the same screen resolution as the iBook's 12" screen at 1024x768. I'm only gaining those 128 pixels on my Powerbook screen, and that translates into what, the size of the clock on my menu bar? Big deal.

If I was using one of the newer Powerbooks, then I could complain about losing "usable screen real estate" in switching from 1280x1024 to 1024x768. So it seems I have solved my own problem.

I first started thinking about this when I noticed people on eBay were managing to snag good prices for their Powerbooks...and when you got your iBook 800, xtal. What a sweet machine..

[diamondsw]

Just do it.