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JohnnyBlazo · Jul 26, 2005, 11:30 PM

Hey guys,
I'm sitting on the fence now. I've convinced myself to get a new apple laptop in the next couple weeks but I'm uncertain which one. I was going to get the 15in powerbook, but now that these new ibooks came out I'm not certain. I figured I would get the 15 in powerbook in all its glory, with 128 VRAM and superdrive, but thinking about it realistically, maybe I should just get a 12in ibook and save 2 grand CAD. Thats a hell of a lot of money for a college student.

My reasons for the powerbook, were to get top of the line, I liked the look, I liked the VRAM upgrade, I like the weight, and the screen size would probably be fine for my eyes.

But now this ibook comes out and I dont know anymore. I probably dont "need" a powerbook, I dabble in music and photo editing, I watch a lot of movies and downloaded TV shows, I chat and surf etc.

Mainly I'm just wondering how much I'm going to need more than 32mb of VRAM? If one of my main intentions is watching videos, would it suffer a lot in that department? I understand this is a ibook part of the forum, but please if you were in my shoes which would you opt for....the 12in ibook or the 1.67 15 in powerbook w/128VRAM?

Thanks in advance and these forums are truely unbelieveable in answering all the questions that lead me this far.

Karim

MichiganRich · Jul 26, 2005, 11:46 PM

Geez dude they aren't even similar. Not a good comparison.

JohnnyBlazo · Jul 26, 2005, 11:49 PM

Does that mean just go with the 15er? Cause u could have just said that.

MindFad · Jul 26, 2005, 11:50 PM

iBook sounds just perfect for what you want to do with your laptop. PowerBook is overkill for that.

zed57 · Jul 26, 2005, 11:54 PM

watchng videos would be fine on the iBook. photo editing may be a bit slower on the iBook, but it's not like it wouldn't be possible. I think you need to look at the two screens and see if you can make do with the 12 versus the 15 (as well the 15 screen is supposed to be better in brightness and colour) cause it seems the video card is not too important for your intended uses.

Steve · Jul 27, 2005, 02:51 AM

You sound like the perfect candidate for an iBook. Photo editing is more than acceptable on the iBook, but the only limiting factor may be the screen size. As zed57 said, go check both out side-by-side if possible and see if the iBook's screen is too small for you to comfortably edit photos on it.

The fact of the matter is, you could buy a larger (say a 20" widescreen Dell LCD) for less than $400 and use it when you need to and not have any problem at all. It'd save you loads of money for all of the other goodies you'll end up wanting to buy

.

senon · Jul 27, 2005, 11:13 PM

Originally Posted by JohnnyBlazo

Hey guys,
I'm sitting on the fence now. I've convinced myself to get a new apple laptop in the next couple weeks but I'm uncertain which one. I was going to get the 15in powerbook, but now that these new ibooks came out I'm not certain. I figured I would get the 15 in powerbook in all its glory, with 128 VRAM and superdrive, but thinking about it realistically, maybe I should just get a 12in ibook and save 2 grand CAD. Thats a hell of a lot of money for a college student.

My reasons for the powerbook, were to get top of the line, I liked the look, I liked the VRAM upgrade, I like the weight, and the screen size would probably be fine for my eyes.

But now this ibook comes out and I dont know anymore. I probably dont "need" a powerbook, I dabble in music and photo editing, I watch a lot of movies and downloaded TV shows, I chat and surf etc.

Mainly I'm just wondering how much I'm going to need more than 32mb of VRAM? If one of my main intentions is watching videos, would it suffer a lot in that department? I understand this is a ibook part of the forum, but please if you were in my shoes which would you opt for....the 12in ibook or the 1.67 15 in powerbook w/128VRAM?

Thanks in advance and these forums are truely unbelieveable in answering all the questions that lead me this far.

Karim

When I think what you are doing with a laptop, I think an ideal combination is new ibook 12 + dell 20' wide LCD. I was exactly in the same situation as you. I had dell 20' wide LCD, so I decided to choose ibook 12 and use external LCD.

As for LCD, obviously, powerbook 15 is much better than ibook 12. However, based on what you are doing, the performance will not make difference between pb15 and ibook12.
If you really want to save money, buy Dell LCD (1704 or 1905 or 2005) and ibook12.

Also, currently, it is not good time to buy expensive powerbook, because you know, apple is moving to the intel chip.

Hope it helps.

sniffer · Jul 28, 2005, 07:19 AM

The VRAM only makes a difference if you are going to use external screens and perhaps with certain games. But since the iBook by default doesn't support screen spanning but only mirroring, the 32 MB is perhaps adequate for most tasks. (An exception might be with the Quartz 2D Extreme, but it's not a feature set of OS X yet so it's not necessary a big loss.) I think the iBook line is a fine value right now. Actually if I was in the marked I would've seriously considered the 14".

longwood · Jul 28, 2005, 10:19 AM

one thing i have to say about the screen size is that i went looking in the apple store and was looking at the 12" ibooks and thought they were extremely small, so i was planning on getting a 14" but because of lack of money i decided to go with a used 12" and while it is still small it seems much bigger than when i was at the apple store. i'm really happy that i went with the 12" now.