Advice needed for laptop purchase :)

[absolut_mac]

Okay all you mac mavens, here's the chance most of you have been waiting for (I think).

I'm about to purchase my first mac, a laptop for my daughter's 15th birthday.

I had initially settled on a 12" PB for her, even although my experience with Nvidia graphics cards hasn't been great - I figured it shouldn't be too bad, especially as she's not a gamer.

Now with the release of the updated G4 iBooks, it looks like the 12" iBook is marginally less good than the PB, for about $500 less. Plus it comes with an ATI card too.

The only real advantage that I see of the PB over the iBook is the larger L2 cache, 512M versus 256M.

Anybody here have a chance to compare these two side by side?

All opinions welcome:)

[QCassidy352]

this should probably be in the "buying advice" section... but anyway...

the powerbook also has DVI out and audio line in, though most 15 year olds would not care about that. The powerbooks also has 256 RAM built in instead of 128, a bigger standard HD (though either can be custom built bigger), and bluetooth standard instead of as a BTO option. And, of course, 200 mhz of processor speed. (only the 14" goes up to 1 ghz)

Really, what it comes down to is what will she use the computer for. For most 15 year olds, the ibook is by far the better choice, since things like DVI and audio line in will not matter. Also, the ibook will be more durable and hard to hurt if she is going to toss the laptop in a bag for school or something like that. So I say ibook all the way, unless your daughter is in to things like video editing, audio work, etc (which most teenagers are not).