what does the basic model of ibook equivalent to in pc notebooks? i am pc user and always looking forward to try a mac. well, has to be cheap. so i need to have an idea what i am getting for the money.

btw. school apple store online offers $949(basic model + combo +airport extrme), some how i got a $100 off "education" coupon in my email that i previously applied for, so does that mean it's $849? is it a good deal?

thanks

849 sounds good to me. When you say equivalent to, what aspects do you mean? Like processor-wise or overall?

i guess i mean over all, btw does any one knowhow long can the standard battary on that ibook last?

Mines lasts between 3 and 6 1/2 hours depending on what im doing. Watching vids etc. Still gets a good 3 hours + for constant movies/tv series etc after having the ibook for 3 months or so.

my 14 inch always lasts atleast 4 1/2 hours.

it's lasted 7 hours before also.

Are you guys serious? When I'm on my friend's iBook (newest ver.) It seems like his power goes down to like 50% in an hour..

you are trying to compare oranges to apples (pardon the pun). They are 2 different methods of computing/processing data. So you will never truly find a comparison of performance aspects when it comes to data. Thats just all there is to it.

I don't think the $100 rebate applies to the 12' iBook.

ibook computers configured witha CD-ROM optical drive and all eMAC and MAC mini models are excluded from this offer.

the one i am looking at has Combo not CD-ROM

what kind of performance are you trying to compare ?
anything related to video editing or gaming (limited available) is a nightmare on iBook G4...its really slow. Otherwise for regular browse/email/chat functionality its ok.

overallI guess any celeron M based system with 1.5 GHz & up would match up for the basic function. Get a pentium M based system if you need video editing + other stuff.

G4 is overall slow IMO.

thanks dhan, that helps. i would need to do some photoshop and flash editing. guess ibook would not be enough.

photoshop works with no problems on my ibook. it doesn't seem slow to me really at all, and i also have a desktop which is a 3.6ghz p4.

i have an iBook 12" with 768mb ram.

Photoshop loads up for me in 5 seconds where as it takes a while on my 3.2Ghz dual pc.

yea, i am planning on getting 512 ram if i buy it, 256 probably not enough.

how many space does the OS take? is 30G HD enough?

it's enough for me.
After installing all the apps.
(Office, Photoshop and a bunch of others including a few games fully installed) I have around 15gb left empty space.

Seems enough for me.
I'm going to be getting an external hard-drive since it's the safest option these days anyway, plus you can get small palm sized ones as well.

Went to Apple center today, found that i didn't like the ibooks that much, feels cheap. but for 900 bucks, i maybe should not expect that much

You get what you pay for. If you want quality, get a PowerBook. Otherwise, an iBook is fine for most users. Even if it may feel "cheap".