Thinking of making the switch


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Hey, I'm looking to buy a 12" iBook, preferably used and probably with a G3 processor. I currently have a Dell Inspiron 1100 with a 2.0 Celeron, 384 mb RAM, 30 gig HD and CDRW/DVD combo drive. I want the portability and battery life the iBook offers, plus the beautiful OS. I have a few questions:

1. Should I pay good money for a "slower" computer?

2. Will I notice the speed difference? (The Celeron is slow compared to my 1900+)

3. What are your experiences with Airport/Extreme?

4. Is the hardware/software worth the money?

5. How is Office:X

I need some more input before I take the plunge and sell my laptop. I'd really like some guidence, so any helpful suggestions on what to get and your experiences with Apple and OSX would be great!

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1) the computer is not slow. it just uses a different prosseser. i for one know. my mom has a 12 inch ibook and it seems to run faster then my 1.8 ghz notebook. its also pretty quiet compare to pc notebook. i ran itunes, safari, adobe photoshop, and ichat at once and it never slowed it down

2) you probably wont know the difference (i maybe wrong)

3) never had any experince with with it

4) you bet your ass. i use my mom's ibook to do graphic editing with adobe. altho it did took about 15 to 20 sec for it to load. but has never crashed on me.

5) i dont know she had Claris Works

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altho it did took about 15 to 20 sec for it to load.

That should answer your question !

I''m sorry, but anything less than a G4 will be slow with OS 10.x .

Either run OS 9 on it or make sure you get G4.

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1. Should I pay good money for a "slower" computer?

I did and I haven't regretted it. I find just about any computer made in the last 3 years is more than enough for the tasks "joe average" is going to do. Video editing, and huge photoshop files can choke my ibook, and compiling takes a second or two longer than I'd like, but everything else is "teh snappy".

2. Will I notice the speed difference? (The Celeron is slow compared to my 1900+)

Certainly. The real question is will it bother you.

3. What are your experiences with Airport/Extreme?

Excellent. Though you won't be using airport extreme on an iBook G3: the card doesn't fit.

4. Is the hardware/software worth the money?

I wouldn't buy anything else right now, you values will influence that decision a great deal.

5. How is Office:X

Better than the windows version, and if you "buy now" you get 2004 for free when it ships in 3 months. Operators are standing by.

I need some more input before I take the plunge and sell my laptop. I'd really like some guidence, so any helpful suggestions on what to get and your experiences with Apple and OSX would be great!

If you're coming from a Linux/BSD background getting to OS X is like the second coming of christ. I know windows users who think the same thing, but then again I know some who figure it's just more of the same on slower or more-expensive hardware.

We're not talking about a new E-Class: it's a sub-1000 notebook so give it a go. You'd probably be upgrading your PC notebook in a year or so anyway, so if your experiment fails you can go back to x86 hardware on your next scheduled upgrade.

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Bear in mind, if you buy a used laptop, the battery life with be somewhat diminished. As for speed difference, yes it's noticable, but if you have at least 512MB of RAM, it'll run very well and shouldn't bother you at all. Like the evn show said, Airport Extreme is not available for the iBook G3's, only standard 802.11B Airport. (which doesn't matter if you're just surfing the internet. it's only when you copy files from computer to computer that you notice a difference.)

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Instead of selling your computer, why not keep it around until you know for sure that you can use your new Apple product for everything.

If you dont mind me asking, is this for school, audio/visual editing, etc?

I would just like to say that I dont own an Apple computer, but I have used them and I think that it may be wise to sort of "ween" yourself off of Windows before taking the full "plunge" into a MacOS.

STV

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I basically need it to carry around, surf the internet and take notes. Basically word processing and some light website work. Nothing huge, but I'd like something with a long battery life (mine gets 2.5-3 hours) and more portable than my 8lb notebook.

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I have the 900mhz iBook G3, it does everything I need, plus more.

I got ****ed off at MS one day, and decided to go buy my mac. After the first week, I knew I never wanted to use a PC again.

2. Will I notice the speed difference? (The Celeron is slow compared to my 1900+)

Porbably not, the interface will probably seem faster. Especially if you use transparency and stuff.

3. What are your experiences with Airport/Extreme?

Works perfect all the time, awsome.

4. Is the hardware/software worth the money?

I sure think it was. I got this iBook almost a year ago now, and it was a great deal. Saved a lot of money compared to the wintel junk I almost got.

5. How is Office:X

Fine, a few more features then the windows version, but nothing great. Office 2004 looks a lot better though.

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I've been thinking about taking the plunge too and oddly enough, asside from dishing out the money to pay for one of the silly things, the thing that bugs me the most is the keyboard shortcuts are different...I hardly touch my mouse sometimes, just because keyboard is faster...but when i get on a mac I have to stop and re-think all the keyboard shortcuts :s its just something that annoys me, probably not a big deal for most ppl...

There should be new lineups of both ibooks and powerbooks comming out pretty quick here...probably just little upgrades to hold everybody over till the all new lineups in november (supposidly...its all hearsay and speculation at this point)

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I've been thinking about taking the plunge too and oddly enough, asside from dishing out the money to pay for one of the silly things, the thing that bugs me the most is the keyboard shortcuts are different...I hardly touch my mouse sometimes, just because keyboard is faster...but when i get on a mac I have to stop and re-think all the keyboard shortcuts :s its just something that annoys me, probably not a big deal for most ppl...

There should be new lineups of both ibooks and powerbooks comming out pretty quick here...probably just little upgrades to hold everybody over till the all new lineups in november (supposidly...its all hearsay and speculation at this point)

Took me about a week to get used to it, now the windows ones seem really strange.

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I only have three words BUY A MAC, you will be satisfied with it's performance. Also the G3's are going for a very low price these days and they work pretty good

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As far as the speed issue, yes you will notice a slowdown going from a 2ghz Celeron to a 800mhz G3. People may try to convince you otherwise. Like evn said, it really is whether you notice it or not.

That should answer your question !

I''m sorry, but anything less than a G4 will be slow with OS 10.x .

Either run OS 9 on it or make sure you get G4

A G3 WILL NOT run OS X slower than a G4. A G4 is nothing more than a G3 with Altivec instructions (which OS X doesn't use) programmed in. What you will notice is if your video card is Quartz Extreme compatible. I can't remember where the cut off is for the older/newer cards supporting it or not.
I basically need it to carry around, surf the internet and take notes. Basically word processing and some light website work. Nothing huge, but I'd like something with a long battery life (mine gets 2.5-3 hours) and more portable than my 8lb notebook.

Sounds like an iBook will work well for you. It's definately not a Photoshop powerhouse, but for normal usage, it'll be fine. The only thing to watch out for is to get an iBook that has a video card that will run quartz extreme. You will notice a difference.

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What you will notice is if your video card is Quartz Extreme compatible. I can't remember where the cut off is for the older/newer cards supporting it or not.

An 800Mhz G3 iBook should be Quartz Extreme capable, I know the 700Mhz G3 that a friend of mine has is.

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I've been thinking about taking the plunge too and oddly enough, asside from dishing out the money to pay for one of the silly things, the thing that bugs me the most is the keyboard shortcuts are different...I hardly touch my mouse sometimes, just because keyboard is faster...but when i get on a mac I have to stop and re-think all the keyboard shortcuts :s its just something that annoys me, probably not a big deal for most ppl...

Most of the shortcuts that people use on a daily basis (copy, paste, cut, print, etc) are exactly the same, except you use the Apple key instead of the Ctrl key. What's so hard about that?

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And he can always set up his own to whatever he likes here too.

Mac OS has always been designed with keyboard users in mind, I really wonder why people get the idea that "<X> works great, so <Y> must suck".

You hear it all the time. The included hardware works well, so 3rd party mice must suck - no, they work great.

ZeroConf/ad-hoc networking works well, so they must be useless on a LAN - no, they're good there too.

It's difficult to write viruses so the development environment must be difficult: read the Cocoa API - I find it rivals .NET for simplicity and is unmatched in terms of the power it gives you to add extras to your applications (cd-burning is like 8 lines of code, print to pdf is 2, access network resources is almost identical to accessing local files, etc).

It looks so good, so the CPU must be bogged down: no, that's what we have quartz extreme for.

Here's a shot of the "keyboard shortcuts" prefernces panel where you can setup shortcuts for any menu item in any program. You can also just open up a lot of applications with interface builder (well, their mainmenu.nib) and change the interface to suit your needs: keyboard shortcuts and all.

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And he can always set up his own to whatever he likes here too.

Mac OS has always been designed with keyboard users in mind, I really wonder why people get the idea that "<X> works great, so <Y> must suck".

You hear it all the time. The included hardware works well, so 3rd party mice must suck - no, they work great.

ZeroConf/ad-hoc networking works well, so they must be useless on a LAN - no, they're good there too.

It's difficult to write viruses so the development environment must be difficult: read the Cocoa API - I find it rivals .NET for simplicity and is unmatched in terms of the power it gives you to add extras to your applications (cd-burning is like 8 lines of code, print to pdf is 2, access network resources is almost identical to accessing local files, etc).

It looks so good, so the CPU must be bogged down: no, that's what we have quartz extreme for.

Here's a shot of the "keyboard shortcuts" prefernces panel where you can setup shortcuts for any menu item in any program. You can also just open up a lot of applications with interface builder (well, their mainmenu.nib) and change the interface to suit your needs: keyboard shortcuts and all.

AHHHHHHHHHHH!!! I had no idea you could do that! You're my fking hero now!

my friend just bought an 800mhz g3 ibook from some guy for $400 :s I'm sooooo jelous...theres one in the refurbished section of the online apple store thats selling for $640 when they're usually $699

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