After one and a half years of brillance from my 14" G4 933, the urge to upgrade is upon me once more. After a brief dalliance with the darkside that saw me scratch an itch and purchasing an old Libretto CT50 off of ebay (thinking 'well at 850 grams that's small enough to carry around') I've come to realise that what I really want is a 12" mac to carry around. But the big questions remain: Do I wait for 10.4 Tiger to make its appearance? Do I wait for the upgraded iBooks that have been promised? [Or] Do I purchase a powerbook instead? All of these things are rumoured to be occuring in the month of April.
Its hard to hold off as I just want to rush out and buy something today, but hold off I must. The primary applications that I use are MacJournal, Word X.v, Safari, Mail, and iPhoto in fits and starts. I'm attracted to the Powerbook because of its supreme (in Mac terms) thinness and lightness, but it does seem to be a bit expensive when you compare it to the ibook which almost as light (2.2 versus 2.1 kgs) but substantially cheaper (Retail is Aus$1599 versus $2399) in its basic form. In real terms an equivalent ibook would cost $1839 with a 60 gig HD and 512mb of ram). The key points of distinction would then be the new scrolling trackpad, hard drive monitor safety stop, monitor spanning, bluetooth, 3oo mhz, a slightly faster system bus /ram, and a faster hard drive (5400 v 4200). I'm not fussed about the hard drive safety system, don't use bluetooth anything and I'm not sure what difference the speed aspects would make to e-mail, browsing and word processing.
However both the ibook's trackpad and its display can be hacked to give both 2 fingered scrolling and monitor spanning; just like the powerbook. There is of course some concern about a possible relationship between monitor spanning and fried video cards/logic boards. Now that the ibook comes with 256mb of ram in a single slot one is also free to buy ram from other, much cheaper, sources than Apple. The same potentially applies to hard drives; it seems to be possible to open up a G4 ibook and replace its hard drive. Tricky but not impossible. One could then upgrade to a faster hard drive and still have a spare 30 gig drive to either sell or put into an external case. I've noticed that such 2.5" cases sell for ridiculously cheap prices on ebay.
Another concern is that if the ibook is upgraded, will it get a 'better', fully Tiger compliant video card supporting 'core image'? And would that be important? Alot of rumour sites seem to think so (or have forums were people think so) but I'm not so sure - I seem to remember how the G3 didn't fully support OS X but that didn't stop Apple from selling them. Anyway my main reason for upgrading to Tiger would be for Spotlight as working with as many documents as I do (word/pdf's/e-mails) makes a powerful search function seem like a compelling upgrade.
Of course the obvious answer is 'just wait', but I'm in a bit of quandry for two reasons; the first is that whilst I am a student and can get academic discount, I don't have the cash at hand and I don't want to purchase a computer on my (rather limp) credit card - certainly not at 16.5% PA which will quickly gobble up the academic discount. However I do have a David Jones store card which offers 18 months interest free on purchases over $500 but is at the moment offering 2 years interst free. The offer ends next friday. I purchased my current ibook in this manner and this is certainly the best way (for me) to go. On top of all of this, iBook and Powerbooks seem to be completely out of stock at the moment - some stores have a 17" or perhaps a 15" on display and some stores even have a 12" iBook available, but only 30 gig models. Orders are being quoted into the weeks/months range at the moment as Apple is apparently having supply issues. The other reason is of course the price I will get for my old 14" ibook, the sooner I sell it, the more I will get for it.
Its hard to hold off as I just want to rush out and buy something today, but hold off I must. The primary applications that I use are MacJournal, Word X.v, Safari, Mail, and iPhoto in fits and starts. I'm attracted to the Powerbook because of its supreme (in Mac terms) thinness and lightness, but it does seem to be a bit expensive when you compare it to the ibook which almost as light (2.2 versus 2.1 kgs) but substantially cheaper (Retail is Aus$1599 versus $2399) in its basic form. In real terms an equivalent ibook would cost $1839 with a 60 gig HD and 512mb of ram). The key points of distinction would then be the new scrolling trackpad, hard drive monitor safety stop, monitor spanning, bluetooth, 3oo mhz, a slightly faster system bus /ram, and a faster hard drive (5400 v 4200). I'm not fussed about the hard drive safety system, don't use bluetooth anything and I'm not sure what difference the speed aspects would make to e-mail, browsing and word processing.
However both the ibook's trackpad and its display can be hacked to give both 2 fingered scrolling and monitor spanning; just like the powerbook. There is of course some concern about a possible relationship between monitor spanning and fried video cards/logic boards. Now that the ibook comes with 256mb of ram in a single slot one is also free to buy ram from other, much cheaper, sources than Apple. The same potentially applies to hard drives; it seems to be possible to open up a G4 ibook and replace its hard drive. Tricky but not impossible. One could then upgrade to a faster hard drive and still have a spare 30 gig drive to either sell or put into an external case. I've noticed that such 2.5" cases sell for ridiculously cheap prices on ebay.
Another concern is that if the ibook is upgraded, will it get a 'better', fully Tiger compliant video card supporting 'core image'? And would that be important? Alot of rumour sites seem to think so (or have forums were people think so) but I'm not so sure - I seem to remember how the G3 didn't fully support OS X but that didn't stop Apple from selling them. Anyway my main reason for upgrading to Tiger would be for Spotlight as working with as many documents as I do (word/pdf's/e-mails) makes a powerful search function seem like a compelling upgrade.
Of course the obvious answer is 'just wait', but I'm in a bit of quandry for two reasons; the first is that whilst I am a student and can get academic discount, I don't have the cash at hand and I don't want to purchase a computer on my (rather limp) credit card - certainly not at 16.5% PA which will quickly gobble up the academic discount. However I do have a David Jones store card which offers 18 months interest free on purchases over $500 but is at the moment offering 2 years interst free. The offer ends next friday. I purchased my current ibook in this manner and this is certainly the best way (for me) to go. On top of all of this, iBook and Powerbooks seem to be completely out of stock at the moment - some stores have a 17" or perhaps a 15" on display and some stores even have a 12" iBook available, but only 30 gig models. Orders are being quoted into the weeks/months range at the moment as Apple is apparently having supply issues. The other reason is of course the price I will get for my old 14" ibook, the sooner I sell it, the more I will get for it.
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