12" vs. 15" Powerbook, please help me decide...

[tekmoe]

thought i would chime in on this.

my first powerbook was a 15" back in march. then i bought a 12" powerbook for my girlfriend back in august. the portability of the 12" is unbelievable. it truly is an awesome little laptop. after using it so often, i decided i wanted to upgrade my 15" to the 17". let me tell you, the 17" kicks the crap out of the 15".

all a matter of opinon of course.

 

[Clix Pix]

The 15" is fantastic!

Since I already have a 12" Windows laptop, and have had trouble with that small screen, I knew that when the time came to buy a PB that it would be the 15" for all the reasons people have listed above. I wanted to be able to have portability, yes, but also it's important when I'm away from my desktop computer to be able to function similarly to the way I would if I were at home, so I went with the 15" PB and maxed out the RAM to 2 GB and got the 7200 rpm hard drive so that I will easily be able to work on PSCS2 and other RAM-intensive programs while on the road just as easily as I could at home with my iMac. I was surprised when the PB arrived to find that it actually does not feel that much heavier than my 12" laptop! I suspect that it's due to well-balanced weight distribution. I LOVE the backlit keyboard and the size of the keyboard makes typing pleasurable (another problem I had with the 12" laptop: a cramped keyboard). I'm very happy with my choice of the 15" PB and anticipate that it will be in use for a long, long time...

OTB

 

[yg17]

I switched from a 12" iBook to a 15" PowerBook.

I knew I was getting a PowerBook, and was set on getting the 12" PB, as I didn't have any issues with the 12" screen, it wasn't too small for me or anything. I went to my college bookstore to purchase the 12" but found out that they sell the 15" PB for a couple hundred cheaper than Apple's edu store. That put the 15" right within my budget. Still more than the 12", but it was now affordable. So I bought the 15" and glad I did. The 12" screen is great for basic stuff, but if you really want to do anything besides web and e-mail, the larger screen is a must. And it's still portable. It's bigger, but it still lighter than any Windows laptop I've ever held

 

[panda]

Thanks for the input guys. I had the opportunity to work on a 15" PB over the last couple of days, and it sealed my decision.

I'm sure this has been asked. And I searched, but you know how digging through tons of threads can be to find one piece of info...

Can anyone give me an idea of how much difference I'll notice between 1.5G and 2G of ram in a 15" PB? The price difference at Crucial is $125 ($275 for 2 one gig sticks vs. $150 for one stick). Given that I'll probably find myself running all of CS2 plus firefox, etc. at the same time on a regular basis, I was kind of figuring it might be worth it.

way to go! good good move.

i should be standing in line waiting for mine soon as well.

i guess on ram, the story is, if you think you need it, want it and can afford it, it can't hurt.

 

[munckee]

way to go! good good move.

i should be standing in line waiting for mine soon as well.

i guess on ram, the story is, if you think you need it, want it and can afford it, it can't hurt.

Haven't bought it yet, but hopefully soon.

I realize the extra ram won't hurt; the question is how much will it really help? I'm HARD on my computers and tend to run a pretty good pile of programs at once. It's completely normal for me to be image searching online, running photoshop, illustrator, in design, and acrobat, and I'd like to add itunes into the mix. I'm guessing that the extra oomph might be beneficial for me, but I was hoping to get some experienced opinions.

 

[digitalmatty]

Haven't bought it yet, but hopefully soon.

I realize the extra ram won't hurt; the question is how much will it really help? I'm HARD on my computers and tend to run a pretty good pile of programs at once. It's completely normal for me to be image searching online, running photoshop, illustrator, in design, and acrobat, and I'd like to add itunes into the mix. I'm guessing that the extra oomph might be beneficial for me, but I was hoping to get some experienced opinions.

dump in as much ram as possible (that you can afford) the more the better, you'll only ever need more and more as time progresses.

 

[munckee]

Anyone have any thoughts about the ram issue with regards to this problem:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/158289/

 

[Clix Pix]

Anyone have any thoughts about the ram issue with regards to this problem:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/158289/

I ordered my 15" PB BTO with Apple-installed 2 GB RAM and I had no problems either before or after the recent 10.4.3 and Airport upgrades, except for a brief period during which my screen flickered, but that was resolved after the next shutdown and reboot. I never experienced any difficulties due to having 2 GB RAM and was surprised to read about the issues others were finding. Guess I've been lucky...

I do notice that now I get even better signals with my Airport card than I had previously. I just replaced an old Netgear wireless router with a new Linksys and prior to the update the signal had been showing three bars; now all bars are illuminated when I'm in the apartment. When I'm out on the deck I get three bars, whereas before the upgrade I had only two. With the old router I sometimes couldn't get any signal at all out on the deck, so things are good now.

OTB