A little purchase advice needed...

[Chimaera]

Hi everyone.

I've been planning for some time to buy a 15" powerbook when they finally get the upgrade to be inline with the rest of the powerbooks, however, now I have a bit of a conflict brewing...

Basically I realised the other day that for the price involved (assuming the powerbook price is unchanged when it gets revisioned) I could buy a 1GHz superdrive eMac *and* an 900MHz 12" iBook *and* have enough left over to max out the RAM on both machines or instead of the iBook get a 12" powerbook and pretty much break even before RAM additions.

This is attractive for a couple of reasons, firstly I'm getting an iPod for my birthday in a couple of weeks (yay!) and the tought of having a permanent base for it (the eMac) is appealing.

What do you guys think I should do? I won't be doing any high-powered stuff on either machine - no games (I use my PC for that), just photo stuff, and movies from time to time, beyond that normal day to day stuff - email, web and whatnot.

Either way I'll be waiting til after the WWDC to make purcahse, just in case of any surprises...

At this point I'm leaning towards the eMac/PB combo atm - means I get a moderately powerful desktop machine, and a nippy, and highly portable laptop too.

There is nothing the 15" offers over the 12" that I *need*, but lots that I'd like - for example the PCMCIA slot (memory card reader), and widescreen.

Thanks for advice, whatever it may be

 

[Jason_Bryan]

I would go for the Emac/Ibook combo. I use a revA 500Mhz iBook and find that it can handle all my day to day work. I use it to design and deliver training presentations. these include movies and pictures edited on the iBook. I also use a G4 800Mhz PowerMac at the office if I need more power.

 

[Chimaera]

theres a couple of big turnoffs with the iBook though - one is I'd like to beable to use Airport Extreme and the other is Bluetooth - I'd rather not have a little dongle sticking out of the machine all the time

 

[yzedf]

Apple's current BlueTooth is abismal at this stage, so no worries there. I would BT sync to the eMac, and use iSync to keep your eMac and iBook balanced.

802.11g is only usefull for transferring files quickly in your subnet (eMac to PB on your home network for example). It is useless as far as your "internet experience" is concerned.

Besides, 2 computers is far better than one. If something breaks, you have a backup. With just a (overpriced) PowerBook, if it fails you for some reason, you are screwed.

 

[Chimaera]

Originally posted by yzedf
Apple's current BlueTooth is abismal at this stage, so no worries there. I would BT sync to the eMac, and use iSync to keep your eMac and iBook balanced.

802.11g is only usefull for transferring files quickly in your subnet (eMac to PB on your home network for example). It is useless as far as your "internet experience" is concerned.

Besides, 2 computers is far better than one. If something breaks, you have a backup. With just a (overpriced) PowerBook, if it fails you for some reason, you are screwed.

Really ought to have explained my intended uses a bit better I think...

For a start the eMac wouldn't ever be used with bluetooth, only the portable, specifically for interfacing with my mobile for all the various applications available, and also for the Sony Ericcson Clicker application (I do a lot of presentations in my line of work).

The Internet Experience is irrelevant, I transfer large files at home all the time between computes (gigabyte plus in size) and I know haw annoying that is across 10Mbit (I only upgraded the existing network to 100MBit 18months ago) so faster is *definitely* better in that respect.

I do not (and will not *ever*) use .mac so syncing between the two machines is not an option, at least not without doing it manually

 

[mactastic]

The pro line all support monitor spanning, a major selling point IMHO, although you can apparently hack the iBook to allow this.

 

[hvfsl]

I would go for the 15in powerbook since it is faster than the eMac (epecially in games) and the screen is only a bit smaller than the eMac. I am getting a 15in superdrive model off ebay now for only £1100 (about $1700).

 

[Chimaera]

Not going anywhere near a TiBook, and I said I wasn't interested in playing games on it (although I do admit I'll probably use VPC to play some ancient lucasarts graphic adventures I suppose

Whats the screen quality like on the 12-inchers in terms of DVD/DiVX playback?

 

[hvfsl]

Originally posted by Chimaera
Not going anywhere near a TiBook, and I said I wasn't interested in playing games on it (although I do admit I'll probably use VPC to play some ancient lucasarts graphic adventures I suppose

Whats the screen quality like on the 12-inchers in terms of DVD/DiVX playback?

I was just sugguesting that you could get a referb Tibook and a eMac or something. The fact that it was faster at games is just an example, so the new one should be faster. Also about DIVX play back, I have noticed drop frames when playing DIVXs on the ibook 700, but I dont know if it is any better on the 900 version. The droped frames occur on DIVXs encoded at a resolution of 640x480 or higher. Also the ibook screen is good quality but people that dont have perfect vision have complained about small text.