which powerbook do i need?...

Get the top of the line iBook, you will save a lot of money, will have a lot of features and a 14" screen. If that is not enough with the spare money you can get a 17" flat display. Load it with ram.

If you work with Photoshop these days anything works from 400Mhz and over. But get at list 256MB of ram.

I would advise getting the 550 because it has better cooling. I would personally not get the iBook due to it being no where near as fast the the PB in Photoshop and OSX.

Can somebody please explain to me this Venezuela thing to me!

Ensign

as i understand it, Hugo Chaves (the president of venezuela) criticised the american-led campaign in afghanistan as "fighting terror with terror". President Bush promptly recalled the american ambassador, and excluded venezuela from some trade preference programme.

That's according to my venezuelan sister-in-law.

I would suggest either the PowerBook G4 500 or 550 if you are on a tight budget. I have the 500 with 512MB of RAM and it doesn't give me any back talk when I do anything with it. I have manipulated large photoshop files without any problems. Illustrator 9.0.2 runs fine on it as does pretty much every other software package I own. I went to the G4 from a PowerBook G3 500 (pismo) and saw a good increase in speed/performance.

If you can, get the increased hard drive, or get one of the slim externals from VST. Under OSX, those do not need any drivers installed.

I would suggest getting at LEAST another 256 or 512 in memory. Since you will be doing design work on it, you will benefit (allow you to have Photoshop, Illustrator, Quark, a browser, and email application open at the same time).

If you do not think you will need to do burning while remote/mobile, then maybe get one without the superdrive and then just pick up an external burner. With that, you will have the same capabilites, and probably get off cheaper, or at least spread the purchase out a little.

save as much money on the processor/HD as you can, and then buy RAM, and if you really need it buy a hard drive from a vendor online. just make sure you get an IBM or Toshiba. the processor isn't going to make as much of a difference as RAM and HD Speed/Space.

If you buy direct from Apple (or an Apple retail location), go with the 550, no airport, no extra Apple items except for the AppleCare protection plan. Check out http://www.mohawkmem.com for memory for that, and then get it when you can afford to. Going that way, you initial out of pocket expense will be $2,648.00, not too bad considering that it comes with 256MB of memory.

I am contemplating replacing one of my 256MB chips with a 512MB to give me 768MB. I am replacing my G4 desktop with my laptop, and the extra memory will be appreciated.

Anyone interested in the 256MB chip that I will be pulling out of my TiBook??? It is PC100, 222 spec., and has NO issues with any of the firmware updates (I am on the very most recent). If so, email me via my profile. I would like to find a good home for it.

I have the 500 with 384 MB of RAM....and this thing screams! It does everything I've ever asked it to do without ever giving me trouble! I think u could most likely do fine with the 550 and some extra memory....esp for the price!