Apple advice please !

[Shimmyhill]

Ok i admit i made a mistake not buying a Apple laptop

I want one now and i have a Centrino Xp lappy instead

So im gonna sort myself out with a Apple Ibook of some kind. The advise im after is :

A) Good places to buy Apple Ibooks (2nd user as well as new)
B) What spec would you say is minimum for Surfing, photo editing, website creation etc (no games)
C) How long do peeps get out of G3 Ibooks on battery ??

Many Thanks

[Dazzla]

You can grab the new iBook G4 for under 1k which has fantastic battery life, report showing it's gone up to 5:30. Performance will be enough to do the tasks you intend on doing as well.

[Magnakai]

www.shaye.co.uk have some excellent deals, and I've been recommended them by several people. Never actually used them, as I'm still Mac-less, but, you know...

[Fuddle]

C) How long do peeps get out of G3 Ibooks on battery ??

this is what i have, mines been unplugged and on or asleep all day, and now reads 3 hours 23 minutes.

the stuff you want to do, is all i use mine for. its a G3 800mhz, memory is a tiny 256mb.
i've had this for almost a year, and its fine...you can get something better now, and cheaper than i payed easily.

[bowser123]

My mac isn't a laptop (its an iMac G3) and it runs all software well apart from the latest games. I have a 500mhz G3 proc and 1GB RAM. Mac desktops and laptops are very similar in performance terms as long as you are comparing like for like.
Also don't fall for the old PC is more powerful because the spec is higher on paper, they are totally different.
The RAM will be the most important thing for what you are doing, especially Photoshop which is very memory intense.

As for buying there isn't really any difference in prices, Apple have pretty much sown up the market so everybody charges the same roughly.
Apple UK have a sale every Wednesday at 10AM where they sell refurb stock at up to 50% off. Have a look, you may get a bargain. Be quick though as they sell quick.

http://promo.euro.apple.com/promo/refurb/uk/

Not much to see at the moment but you will see in more detail what I'm on about.

[Shimmyhill]

Cheers for all the help chaps

Now to sell the lappy !

[yashiro]

Along a similar line...

Do Apple lappys have any problems joining Windows Domains? (typically Server 2000/3).

I'm guessing if it's set up 'old style' it's fine but if active directory is being used surely it all gets a bit hairy?

[bowser123]

Apple are always banging on about how their machines can talk easily to other OS's and from my very limited experiences of the matter OSX works fine with Windows .

[weresheep]

I have a mid 2002 iBook (700MHz G3, 12.1" display) and I get approx 4 hours battery life. This is my second battery however as the first one died after about 8 months. Apple repaced the battery for free though as it was still within the years warrenty. I also bought AppleCare which gives me a further 2 years warrenty/cover.

I bought my iBook from John Lewis (here in Edinburgh) and they gave my an extra years warrenty over and above Apple's 1 year. Although as it turned out it didn't make a difference as I decided to buy AppleCare anyway.

I find my iBook to be excellent for browsing/simple photoshop/mp3 etc. I have Apples latest OS (Panther aka v10.3) installed and find the speed on pretty much everything to be acceptable. I haven't tried my iBook on a full on Windows network, but I can read and write from my single PC at home no problem. By all accounts, Mac's tend to play nice with Windows.

One thing to note is that all the iBooks are limited to 1024x768 resolution which doesn't bother me but some people find it limitiing. If you want higher res you need to buy a PowerBook.

Also, I would suggest at least 512MB of RAM. OS X works with less and is certainly still usable, but things are generally that bit smoother with more RAM. I have my iBook maxed out at 640MB.

-weresheep

[yashiro]

How would you say it compares to a Windows laptop of equivalent cost?

[weresheep]

I would say the iBook compares pretty well against all comers. As a web/email/mp3 machine it does me fine. In fact, my iBook is the best computer I have ever owned. It certainly is not the fastest machine on the planet but you don't need a speed demon for web browsing

It depends on what you are looking for though. If you are looking for a laptop for web/email, that is portable, stable, easy to use and has great battery life, then I would say the iBook is the top of the list. If you are looking for something else then maybe a PC would be better.

If you have the opportunity, see if you can have a play with one on display and see what you think.

-weresheep

[Shimmyhill]

You lot aint helping you know

I want one even more now.

I also want a ipod

damm u apple !

[FelixofMars]

Yeah, dont fall for the specs on paper.. oh yeah why did they pull that Mac advert that made the Mac to be faster than a PC?

My mac isn't a laptop (its an iMac G3) and it runs all software well apart from the latest games. I have a 500mhz G3 proc and 1GB RAM. Mac desktops and laptops are very similar in performance terms as long as you are comparing like for like.
Also don't fall for the old PC is more powerful because the spec is higher on paper, they are totally different.
The RAM will be the most important thing for what you are doing, especially Photoshop which is very memory intense.

As for buying there isn't really any difference in prices, Apple have pretty much sown up the market so everybody charges the same roughly.
Apple UK have a sale every Wednesday at 10AM where they sell refurb stock at up to 50% off. Have a look, you may get a bargain. Be quick though as they sell quick.

http://promo.euro.apple.com/promo/refurb/uk/

Not much to see at the moment but you will see in more detail what I'm on about.

[weresheep]

Well to be fair, they pulled that advert because Apple were not able to prove that their new dual G5 PowerMac was "the fastest, most powerful personal computer in the world", which is what they were claiming.

I would argue that proving such a thing is really hard/impossible to do and I would fully expect a Dell (or other PC OEM) advert making the same claim to be pulled for the same reason.

About specs: well it is obvious to me that a 500MHz G3 processor is not going to be able to compete in raw performance with a 3.06GHz Pentium IV Xeon. It would be silly to claim otherwise.

But, and here is the important bit that is often lost on people, does that make the 500Mhz G3 useless? Unusable? Too slow to render a web page? Unable to decode a MP3 in real time? No, of course not. Any modern computer can do almost any task fast enough to keep a user happy. Faster computers only benefit gamers and those doing processor intensive tasks.

-weresheep