Portege R100 or NEW G4 IBook?

[DavidCL23]

Has anyone used either machine and can post their thoughts please. Also, the Ibook was just released which i like, I see the portege is from june, when do you think the portege will be updated (i need firewire and its missing it :( )

[question fear]

i have never used a portege, but one of my best friends has a toshiba laptop. he likes it, but its monstrous compared to my ibook (900mhz G3).
The thing is, you aren't being very clear about your needs....do you need windows? do you need the G4 for photoshop, etc?
You said you needed firewire, and since its not terribly likely (although not impossible) that someone on these boards coudl tell you when/if the r100 is getting firewire, i would say go with what you need now. If you need a computer wiht firewire, are comfortable with Mac OS X, and can move away from windows, go for it. If you can't leave windows (software reasons, etc) and virtual pc doesnt work for you, then keep looking i guess...i know fujitsu makes some smallish computers with firewire.
--carly
ps the ibook is also almost a 1,000 cheaper than the r100....if you are looking to spend more, and gain portability, have you thought about the 12in powerbook?

[DavidCL23]

I need firewire for the R100 b/c it doesn't have an optical drive installed and I have an external smartdisk cdrw which I could use if they installed a firewire port.
I really just need something for typing in class, but something extremely small, but comftorable, and with VERY LONG battery life. I would also like to keep my music library with me, and maybe watch a couple divx movies off the machine at night.

[Lanbrown]

You could get the iBook with a CD-RW drive so you wouldn't have to lug the external one around and you would still have FW and USB.

The Protégé can handle more memory then the iBook, but it doesn't have BT as an option. The iBook supports 802.11g while the Protégé has 802.11a/b. Both have two USB 2.0 ports, but the iBook has one FW compared to none. Both have 32MB of graphics memory. You can get the iBook with 30, 40 or 60GB drives, compared to 30 or 40GB only. The runtime for both is equivalent.

For the same cost as the Protégé, you can get an iBook with max memory, 60GB drive, BT, 802.11g, a larger screen, an extra battery and Applecare. Or you could go with the 12” and use the extra money for an iPod, movies, music, book or even food and still have it loaded.

[question fear]

I used to type all my notes in class too...esp now that you say you need fw for the optical drive i would definitily recommend the ibook. the major benefit of the r100 appears to be about 2lbs, and that doesnt seem so fantastic if you consider the added space you'll need to carry your opt. drive.
And if the battery life is a major issue, get an extra battery. its still waaay cheaper and more space efficient than using the r100 (or equiv) + external optical drive.
Finally, if you turn off all wireless or all superfluous wireless in class you'll get a wicked good battery life.
--Carly

[cubist]

He already has the drive. Does the Portege have a PCMCIA slot? I've seen Firewire cards for about $80 (I suppose they're "cardbus" rather than PCMCIA).

Might want to consider the 15" Pbook if it's in the same price class. Sure, it's bigger, but it's probably lighter, and watching movies on it will be a lot more pleasant.

[Lanbrown]

But he would still have to lug it around compared to the iBook has it built-in. How would he power the external drive? Yes, the Toshiba has a slot, but that is still $80 that would have to be spent. All systems are cardbus these days, as the original PCMCIA spec was 16-bit and cardbus is 32-bit.

[fraeone]

Bottom line is there are a lot of differences between the two models, and nobody here is going to be able to make the decision for you.

As far as the portege getting Firewire, I wouldn't hold my breath, many, many PC laptops don't include firewire because of feature overlap with USB2.0

[Spock]

Get an iBook, Come on people this is an Mac site

[Lanbrown]

It's his decision to make and pointing out the pros and cons for each will allow David to make his own informed decision.

[yamabushi]

I would reccomend the 12" iBook(4.9lbs) since it will provide much more battery life than the Portege and meets the needs you mentioned. Also consider the 12" Powerbook(4.6lbs) and the 15" Powerbook(5.6lbs).

[DavidCL23]

Thanks for all the help, the portege seems to be the best option bc the battery life is 6.5 hrs and the price is only $1800 for me. I am just wondering has anyone actually seen it in person and can inform me on its build quality (very important questions since nowadays many laptops are built poorly :( ).
Thanks a ton,
David

[Schiffi]

http://www.csd.toshiba.com/cgi-bin/tais/pc/pc_cf_prodChassis.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@1474758988.1067399768@@@@&BV_EngineID=cccjadcjkfhfeelcgfkceghdgngdglk.0&comm=ST&plin=Portables&pfam=Portege&pmod=R100

($1800)

versus


http://www.apple.com/ibook/specs.html

($1,099-$$1,499)

Also if you look at the tech specs it says the Primary battery gets 2:02hours of battery time. So to get 6.5 hours you must have a 2nd battery installed (High Capacity). On the other hand the iBook gets 6hours. So if half an hour is worth 700 dollars, go for it. Personally I'd go for the iBook for $1099 and use the money you save for an extra battery (12hours total) and some apps (Office, Photoshop, ect) or whatever else you need. You might want to play with the iBook first in an Apple store, but this decision is pretty much set towards the iBook.

[DavidCL23]

IBOOK it is :) I just need to get my hand on one of those $100 off $999 coupons and then its a done deal :) if anyone can please help out :). Thanks a ton :)

[Lanbrown]

Apple education store?
http://www.apple.com/education/
You mention class so if you are a student, get the education discount. Then you don't need the coupon.

[herrmill]

Maybe you'll want to buy two... I've used both & still love my iBook.

[benixau]

Also the bigger battery from my understanding and various reviews clips under the back of the notebook. This makes it bulkier and heavier.

In other words: 6.5hrs from Toshiba only happens when you agree to loose all benefits off getting the R100 in the first place.
Just get an iBook and have an internat CD-RW + BT + AP-X (802.11g) + MacOS (ha - toshiba cant ever do that one) + FireWire + speed + ………

[lewdvig]

I had a similar Sony Vaio.

The seperate CDRom drove me nuts, AND you can only restore the OS and software from a Toshiba (or in my case Sony) brand drive. It was $400 for a CDRom - not even a burner!!!

Also, you will be getting Intel 'Extreme' graphics. EXTREMELY BAD! Forget about games here.

The ULV Centrinos are nice, but at 900 or 1100MHz they won't be much faster than am iBook. The iBooks ATI 9200 kills the Intel 865G, and you get a built in DVD/CDR.

For a usable portable, the 900MHz G3 or 800MHz G4 12" is a good choice.

[5300cs]

Well, the Toshiba looks kind of cool, but I'd go with the iBook. Battery life, weight, gfx card (if that matters) and you can use the extra $ to get some other goodies.

The Toshiba doesn't come with an optical drive, is that right? That's lame.

[DCKiwi]

Here's my two cents for what it's worth:

I've seen a couple of portege 2000's (very very similar to the R100, main difference in the newer model is the upgrade from PIII to Pentium M) in the flesh. They are very nice computers. They are extraordinarily thin -- under one inch at the thickest point and less at the front edge. As noted above however you will need the extra battery 'slice' to get the claimed battery life. I think that increases the weight to 3 or 3 and a half pounds.

The build quality on Toshiba's professional computers is very good (much much better than the Satellites).

The screen is nice too, nice and bright and very clear.

I wouldn;t wory too much about not having an internal drive. Realistically you probably don't use the thing that often.

While its a nice computer it is quite expensive. The $1800 price you say you'll get it for is a good price but is still significantly more than the ibook. You could do a lot with extra cash. So in one way its a a trade off: do you want a to carry around 2 pounds less weight computer or $700.

Or with educational discount I think you could get a 12 inch powerbook with superdrive for $1600. Which, if you ask me would be a nicer computer than either the R100 or ibook.

(Full disclosure:
1. I just bought a combodrive 12 in PB and I think it's very an extra nice little computer
2. The computer it replace was a Toshiba Satellite Pro 430CDS [Pentium 120; 1.3 GB Hard drive; 48 MB RAM], which served me very well over the years)

Cheers and good luck

(First post BTW)

[Danger! Will]

The Toshiba R100 is a GREAT subnotebook computer. The high capacity external battery is included and doesnt really add any bulk. If you need something really thin and really light that looks sweet go with the Toshiba. IBM and Toshiba are probably the best PC laptops.

The iBook however is an excellent value. I don't really like the new gray/white case. Although I haven't seen the new iBook in person just in the pics on the apple site.

Both are great machines. Stylewise I think the Toshiba looks better.

Panther is included with the new iBook.

I'd go to an apple store to test drive a new ibook. If you are a windows/linux guy the Toshiba is cream of the crop.

[DavidCL23]

Looks like the R100 it is now :) I just can't pass up such an amazing price... do you think there is a new model coming out soon, and that's why I am getting such a large discount? I could hold out another month or two for a newer model even if just a slight speed increase.

[Danger! Will]

What price is it going for? Who are you looking at buying it from? I need a small notebook for school and if it's available at a good price I want an R100 too.

[herrmill]

I believe he meant to say iBook. Read the earlier post above.

[Danger! Will]

Looks like the R100 it is now

I think he wants the R100

[herrmill]

Look above from DavidCL23:

IBOOK it is! I just need to get my hand on one of those $100 off $999 coupons and then its a done deal if anyone can please help out . Thanks a ton!

[Lanbrown]

Originally posted by DavidCL23
Looks like the R100 it is now :) I just can't pass up such an amazing price... do you think there is a new model coming out soon, and that's why I am getting such a large discount? I could hold out another month or two for a newer model even if just a slight speed increase.

In the Intel world, there is always a faster machine coming out tomorrow.

[cougar]

Hello all,

Danger! Will : You are on a Mac forum and you are convincing a student to buy a PC. It does not take a genius to figure out that you don't like Macs because if you liked Macs, you would know that once you use a Windows machine and see how buggy it is...you never recommend a PC to somone ever again. That being said...

David : You were sold on the Toshiba laptop. Why? Please consider this fact: You are about to buy a machine that runs an operating system that has the worst reputation... and is governed by Microsoft, who call security exploits in their operating system, features. Now lets look at the iBook compared to the portégé...

* Toshiba 1 GHz.
• iBook : 800 Mhz.

(800 MHz Mac is = to a 1.6 GHz PC)

* Windows XP Pro
• Mac OS X 10.3

(Ask yourself, stable and secure vs unstable and riddled with bugs called features)

* No optical drive
• DVD ROM/CD Drive

(Why the hell is the Toshiba not coming with a CD drive? How do they expect you to restore your computer's OS after Windows crashed because your machine was exploited because of the cool features)

* Tyrant 32 MB
• ATI Mobility 9200

(What is a Tyrant?)

* Firewire Ports : Zilch, Zero, Nada!
• One FireWire 400 port at up to 400 mbps

Dave you said this...
I need firewire for the R100 b/c it doesn't have an optical drive installed and I have an external smartdisk cdrw which I could use if they installed a firewire port.
I really just need something for typing in class, but something extremely small, but comftorable, and with VERY LONG battery life. I would also like to keep my music library with me, and maybe watch a couple divx movies off the machine at night.

The iBook exceeds this requirement. I am pretty sure carrying an external CD drive will be cumbersome. Also your drive is Firewire and and you will be paying close to $80 for a decent reputable Firewire PCMCIA card.

About the battery life: The battery life is long on the Toshiba only because it not powering a DVD/CD drive. It is also long because Toshiba is power consuming. I have messed with 3 Toshibas the other day and they are power / battery hungry. I'm speaking from experience. I have seen these tests and when they test the battery, the laptop is sitting there with basically every feature turned off. Just like benixau said.

About the graphics card : Intel what? Apple users may not have a huge assortment of games, which is slowly changing, but with the Toshiba laptop, you won't have much of an assortment at all. That graphics card runs games poorly.

Bottom line: I'm a Programmer / Specialist and trust me, the iBook is a much better computer. You will receive better support with the iBook. You will be running the best operating system ever to be developed. Last but not least, you won't be chained to Microsoft. You will have more possibilites with the iBook and less Windows Update sessions if you were to go with the Toshiba.

Take my word for it, get the iBook!

[lewdvig]

Today's $2000 PC laptop is next year's $700 ebay special. Trust me.

Ultra slims depreciate even faster because average people do not want a laptop with no drives.

Oh, the Tyrant video? That is new. When buying a laptop rank graphics chip vendors in this order:

1. ATI
2. NVidia
3. Intel
---------------------------------------
4. no monitor at all just a keyboard and your imigination
5. SiS, Trident, NeoMagic, S3