powerbook buying advice

[Homebrew13]

Well I have a problem and I am wondering if someone can help me. I am both working on my masters and teaching high school so I qualify for the Education discount. However, my college (one of 4 in the country) that has an extra education discount but only on Mac standard issue machines. I want to purchase the following machine:

• 1.5GHz PowerPC G4 with 128MB Graphics Memory
• 512MB DDR333 SDRAM - 2x256 SO-DIMMs
• 80GB Ultra ATA drive @ 4200 rpm
• SuperDrive (DVD-R/CD-RW)
• Backlit Keyboard/Mac OS - U.S. English
• AirPort Extreme Card
• APP for PowerBook (w/ or w/o display) - Enrollment Kit
• 15.2-inch TFT Display

Subtotal $2,583.00

That is the subtotal with a normal education discount. If I choose to not get the upgraded video RAM, turning the machine into a standard issue machine and still includes the APP I can save approximatly $300.00 (everything else stays the same).

So my fisrt question is the extra video card actually worth that much?

My next question is...could I buy the standard machine from school save $300 dollars than take the to a mac store within 10 days and ask them to change the video card and I would pay the difference ~$45 upgrade on the website. Does anyone know if the mac store would be able to do that? Thanks in advance for the advice.

[atari1356]

The video card alone is definitely not worth $300 more... for me the difference was $50, so I went ahead and upgraded to the 128meg one - but for $300 savings I'd say stick with the 64meg card.

However, you might consider upgrading the hard drive to the 5400rpm one, and it's a noticeable improvement over the 4200rpm drive. Barefeats has some comparisons of the video cards and hard drives which will probably help with your decision:

http://www.barefeats.com/pb12.html

And to answer your last question, I'm almost certain that there's no way to upgrade from 64meg vram to 128meg after you purchase the PowerBook.

[wide]

I would order online and skip the AppleCare until Apple's initial warranty is no longer in effect. Then, you could upgrade to the 128 MB video card ($45) and a single DIMM of 512 MB RAM ($90; for future upgrades). You would save over $100 then, and you will probably have another $150 dollars one year later to buy an AppleCare Protection Plan.