[Patty]

I have a granddaughter who is going to university this autumn, and I would like to get her an iBook for a gift. She has a computer already, but it is not a laptop. Would an iBook's portability be useful enough to justify a second machine? And is the iBook a good choice for an history major? Presumably she will need to write essays as the main part of her coursework. Thanks!

~Patty

[Applefreak01]

As long as your grand daughter doesn't need to run Microsoft Windows only programs the iBook will be just fine. She can get a copy of Microsoft Office 2004 Student and Teacher Edition to write her papers. The iBook comes with Appleworks also but Microsoft Office would be better if she needs to send her professors a copy instead of a hard print.

Myself I have a iBook and a Windows desktop. I find the portability of the iBook absolutely a must for me. Being able to move around the house or take it to a tech job (I'm a service tech) or just take it anywhere I go is a nice feature. The iBook is light and very tough.

Get her the iBook and she'll love you for getting her it.

[Chimpmaster]

Originally Posted by Applefreak01

As long as your grand daughter doesn't need to run Microsoft Windows only programs the iBook will be just fine. She can get a copy of Microsoft Office 2004 Student and Teacher Edition to write her papers. The iBook comes with Appleworks also but Microsoft Office would be better if she needs to send her professors a copy instead of a hard print.

Myself I have a iBook and a Windows desktop. I find the portability of the iBook absolutely a must for me. Being able to move around the house or take it to a tech job (I'm a service tech) or just take it anywhere I go is a nice feature. The iBook is light and very tough.

Get her the iBook and she'll love you for getting her it.

The ibook is an excellent computer even as a primary machine. They are fast, very portable and offer excellent value for money.

Microsoft office 2004 is a good buy via education - as is the ibook. Make sure you get the purchase through her so she can get the benefits of the student discounts, which are enormous and can be done easily via the apple store over the net. All you have to provide is a copy of the student card.

The new apple IWorks is an excellent solution also offering compatability with word, excel and powerpoint, and is much cheaper than office. You could bundle that and always purchase office later, but some people are more comfortable with office...

[ghporter]

Check with her school to see if she'll need any specific software. Some courses require Windows-only custom software, so an iBook won't help her there. The school should be able to help you out in a lot of ways; some even detail the kinds of security available for laptop users in their dorm rooms.

[the_glassman]

NeoOffice/J works well for an Office application and is free. As for Windows only software Virtual PC would work fine for any problems that may arise.

[GSixZero]

The iBook is a great choice.

Apple offers student discounts, so you can save up to a couple hundred bucks, depending on what you get.

[osxisfun]

agreed

[orry_main]

Just to add one more reply: I'm a history major and my two iBooks over five years (my clamshell died) have served me perfectly! I doubt if your granddaughter would need any Windows-specific software as a history major unless her university offers undergraduate methodology courses that are heavy on statistics, or if she took other courses outside of history, which I imagine she will. However, you don't say what her main computer is (it could be a windows machine), and I suspect that the university would have labs with any of the specific software available.

[Gorilla]

I'd like to second orry_main's point. I did a lot of history courses, and the ibook was great. A lot of the grad students and many undergrads have ibooks. Word works great for everything, and the ibooks have enough power to do everything. Stuff like endnote is also available, which gets useful quite quickly. I would still be happy with my ibook today, if I hadn't dropped it and cracked the screen last week. But it served me well for more than 2 years.

[lothar56]

One thing I'd like to add is that Apple's educational discount on Office is not always the best. I know here at Iowa State University, Microsoft offers a "student select" program where I can get Office for Mac for $60 as opposed to the Student and Teacher's edition from Apple for $150. I got an iBook last December and it's been perfect for my engineering courses, and its portability is unmatched. The battery life on the 14" screen in phenominal. And if there are any window-specific things I need to do, there are plenty of computer labs available.

[funkboy]

The iBook is a wonderful choice. From pure anecdotal experience, it seems many girls comment on how small or cute my iBook is; of course, my sentiments are exactly the same. I think she'd love it.

Pick up an academic copy of Microsoft Office for Mac (many colleges offer a really cheap deal on it if you go directly to their bookstore - mine offers it for $69 with a college ID).

Also, get her the program Adium <http://www.adiumx.com> to allow her to chat with her friends who will no doubt stubbornly use MSN Messenger for Windows. There is a Mac version of MSN, but it's absolutely awful; it seems designed to make the Mac run poorly, to have other people (and yourself) see how it behaves and go, "wow, your Mac sucks." I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft actually made them do it this way.

Adium is a 3rd party chat client that supports AOL, MSN, Yahoo, and a few others. It works really well, and it's the perfect thing for chatty college students (like me).

Battery life is wonderful, too!

[SpaceMonkey]

Also, keep in mind that the iBook line will almost certainly be updated at some point between now and this fall. I'd wait to buy until after Apple has done so.

[D'Espice]

I'm an American Culture & Literature major and have therefore a lot of history classes, and also have to write essays and papers all the time. From this point of view, I can assure you that the iBook is an excellent choice. Besides the already mentioned Windows software problem, there are some additional things to consider. What is more important, portability or screen size? Personally, I prefer the 12" iBooks over their 14" equivalents since they're not only a lot cheaper but also weigh less, have the exact same resolution (1024x768) and have the exact same keyboard. You should also put in another 256MB of RAM. For what she will be doing, a total of 512MB of RAM will be more than enough whereas a total of 256MB of RAM will not be enough and the iBook will feel extremely sluggish.

As for software, there are basically two options: MS Office or iWork. MS Office:mac is more expensive but it also offers more than the latter. I purchased MS Office:mac 2004 for 150� (EDU license) and it's been worth every dime so far. Very recently, I have purchased iWork for 70� (EDU license) and am pretty impressed right now. I was not at first though, the first time I used Pages was horrible. Once you get used to it though, it's a pretty nice piece of software and very recently, I have created my own template for papers I have to write according to the MLA guidelines. This most certainly did make things a lot easier for me.
You may wanna consider to get iWork for your granddaughter first and if she's not happy with it you can anways purchase the EDU copy of MS Office:2004 for her.

[macintologist]

Don't bother with the Neo-office, Java office, iWork or any of that crap. Just get her Microsoft Office 2004 Student & Teacher Edition.

[ghporter]

Some schools have special licensing deals with Microsoft. Most of the University of Texas system has a deal where MS products cost students, faculty, and staff about $7 per disk. Office would be $14 or $21 (I can't remember how many disks the newest version comes on). This is a Good Deal, and one that should be taken advantage of to encourage schools and MS to keep it up!

I'm starting back in June, and I'm headed to the book store as soon as I get my ID to stock up on software.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by Patty

I have a granddaughter who is going to university this autumn

YOU have a granddaughter, rrriiiiiiggght !

-t

[D'Espice]

Originally Posted by macintologist

Don't bother with the Neo-office, Java office, iWork or any of that crap. Just get her Microsoft Office 2004 Student & Teacher Edition.

I don't agree, sometimes Pages can be enough. Not everybody needs Excel, PowerPoint or Entourage. Sure, it's a bargain but why bother? I've started writing my papers in Pages and hey, it does the job

[mpancha]

I still haven't tried pages, but depending on the University your daughter is goign to, you might be able to pick up office for a rather low price.

At UT (university of Texas - Austin), Office 2004, professional costs $15 (yup, that is fifteen)

Pages, from what I have read and seen on the keynote, will work great and is interoperable with Office, however she may or may not need office for excel, at least until Apple comes out with a spreadsheet program.

All in all the ibook will be great, but you may also want to consider a 15" powerboook depending on what kind of computer user your daughter is.

[longwood]

At UB (SUNY University at Buffalo) I picked up Office 2004 for free. So I would say if your granddaughter needs it then she could just probably get it herself for pretty cheap if not free.

[brettcamp]

If she can get MS Office that cheap or free, then sure, go for it. But if not, the iBook will come with AppleWorks; I know it gets dissed by high end users, and yes it needs an update -- but its word processor is perfectly adequate for most college students' writing needs. At least let her try it out before sending more $ to Microsoft. It might well be all she needs. Even TextEdit will do for basic paper writing.
Among academic types, Mellel comes highly recommended for its support of footnotes etc. and it's probably the best word processor out there, and very reasonably priced.
All these programs will read and save as MS Word files, with varying degrees of accuracy, but still usably.

[BKKloppenborg]

i am getting a ibook and i am in College and i tried the OS other day and its very good for school just make sure you get a word procesing program for it... Good luck!

[macintologist]

Originally Posted by D'Espice

I don't agree, sometimes Pages can be enough. Not everybody needs Excel, PowerPoint or Entourage. Sure, it's a bargain but why bother? I've started writing my papers in Pages and hey, it does the job

The thing is, we don't know how much of a techie her granddaughter is. What if someone sends her a Word file, and it doesn't open properly in iWork? Or what if she needs to send something she does in iWork, and it doesn't convert to Word properly. Sometimes precise formatting is called for and a simple conversion could mess that up.

That's why I think just getting Office S&T Edition is the best option. It's compatible with the PC word and it's a great app too. The notetaking features might come in hand when she takes her iBook to a history lecture, especially that audio feature.

[macintologist]

Brettcamp,

Heh, I didn't think about TextEdit. Yea, that could suffice for the time being, and if it's not good enough, she can buy Office Student & Teacher edition