"An Apple a day keeps Microsoft away." - Anon.

 

Jason, I just did a quick price check on the 17 inch PowerBook from Apple Education. With Calif. sales tax at 8.25% I get exactly $3,000 for the computer with 1 GHz of memory. Are you going to spend $1,000 on software? I guess you could if you were going to buy Office, Illustrator, Quark, and Photoshop.

 

Jason does that include the student discount? You do know going thru the web site they give students a small discount.Kevin

 

My first post from my new Powerbook! I went with the 1.67 Ghz G4 15" with the standard 512 memory. I plan on upgrading the RAM third-party soon. $2099 with a Superdrive and a student discount.

 

I need to read all the posts...lol sorry Kevin

 

Apple gouges on memory -- buy 3rd party.

The 17inch is a brilliant powerbook, but I would not care to lug it around very much.

My advice: If you like to mouse around, get the 15 inch. If you are a KB shortcut kind of guy, get a 12 inch, and install Launchbar.

Well, on second thought, get Launchbar no matter what

 

Yes, Apple does charge quite a premium for memory. I just picked up a Mac Mini tonight, and made sure to ask the 'Genius' at the Apple Store whether cracking it open and installing a 1 Gig stick on my own would void its warranty. He said, surprisingly, no it wouldn't. Surprising, because the only way to open the Mini is with a pair of putty knives

I wonder how many flame wars have erupted between fans of LaunchBar and those of Quicksilver?

 

"I wonder how many flame wars have erupted between fans of LaunchBar and those of Quicksilver?"

None. LaunchBar does not have fans. It has addicts.

You know that annoying feeling you get when forced to use a 'doze box ? I get the same feeling (well.. lesser in intesity) when I use a Mac without LB.

A good friend of mine is an avid Mac guy too, and recently bought a 1.25Ghz 12inch PB. He was crowing how responsive it was after adding RAM (truly, a must), so we did some head to head time testing finding files, sending email, looking up something in wikipedia ..

Me and my 667 Mhz TiBook running 10.3, with LB
Him with his new PB and running Tiger (nomially twice as fast as mine), and mouse.

The best he could ever do was about twice the time, lol. After a while he just gave up, and asked me to show him how I was using my Mac, not quite believing I was not cheating.

In day to day computing, the UI is everything

 

I've been using my 17" Powerbook almost exclusively since I bought it last August. A few things to watch for:
- battery stays charged for a paltry amount of time; they've replaced it twice for me with no improvement, I get MAYBE an hour
- the fan on this thing runs more than any other laptop I've used; get one of the little laptop "seats" to keep it cool and slightly elevated
- if you're using the wireless feature, be prepared for your ISP to blame any and all server/connection issues on Apple
- enjoy!

P.S. Let me know if you have the battery issue with the 15"

 

Hmm, battery life doesn't sound right, unless that big ole screen really gobbles it up. My 12 inch iBook gets easily 2.5 to 3 hours out of a charge.

I would gladly pay a premium for OS X over Windows. As a matter of act I did, I'm posting this from my 20 inch Flat Screen iMac, proabably over a $1k premium over a similar PC

We all paid a premium for our Hybrids over a comparable ICE-only car. People are just willing to pay more if it's something that's worthwhile to them. Macs vs PCs is no different.