Ahhhhhhhhhhhh, confused!!!

[Eagon]

Last night i ordered a 15" PB SD from the Apple Refurb Store UK for £1263. I am now having slight regrets in that I could almost get 2 12" ibooks for the same price (not that i would do that) and get the student union deal. I am starting university in September and plan to use the laptop for general messing about and some gaming (likely to be football manager 2005 and 2006). What i want to know is how easy is it to cancel the order if i decide to? Is the 15" worth the extra money? Was that a good price for the PB considering the iminent update?

As you can see i am an extremely indecisive person and all i really need is some justification for spending the extra money !!!!!!11!!one!!!!!

Eagon

 

[tikibangout]

It kind of depends how much you'll be using it for gaming and how demanding the games you'll be playing are. The iBook isn't really something to use on demanding games. The PB would be better at that.

 

[Chrispy]

If you are wanting to do gaming, as the powerbook line is now, you made the right choice. As I established in another thread the difference between game performance on the current iBooks and the 12" powerbook is basically nothing. The 15" powerbook is the way to go if graphics power is important to you. I still just have a soft spot in my heart for the 12" powerbook tho... so small and sexy haha.

 

[ChrisBrightwell]

Personally, I'd pay extra just for the larger (and nicer!) screen. I paid through the nose for my Powerbook, but I now use it as my primary machine and it's served me well over the last year.

My fiancée has a 12" iBook that she absolutely adores. If I didn't use my Powerbook at LAN parties and for "in the field" Final Cut work, I'd probably have opted for the iBook.

As it stands, though, I'm completely happy with my purchase ... even if it did cost me twice as much.

 

[Eagon]

Is an upgrade to 1gb RAM enough or should i spend the extra money and go up to 1.5gb?

 

[stonyc]

Is an upgrade to 1gb RAM enough or should i spend the extra money and go up to 1.5gb?

The more RAM the better... if you can afford the 1.5, or even 2GB, why not? 1GB will more than likely suit you just fine, however.

One advantage though of upgrading to 1.5GB would be having the option to upgrade to 2GB at a later time for less cost... what I mean is that:

By starting with 2x512GB sticks and having to buy 2x1GB sticks, you would instead have 1x512GB + 1x1GB sticks, and have to buy only the one more 1GB to get to the full 2GB.

EDIT: Oh, and buy the RAM from Newegg or Crucial if possible, they are a cheaper alternative than Apple's.

 

[Makosuke]

Having bought a 15" PB for work not two weeks ago, and having set up iBooks for several people, I woudln't feel at all bad about my decision were I you. For all the hulabaloo everybody is making about the PowerBooks, the fact is they're really nice computers. I'd absolutely love to have one of the current 15" models if I could justify spending the money--they have a nice screen, very sexy case, are sufficiently fast, and just qualify as all-round nice comptuers.

Not that the iBooks aren't fine, too, but you do get what you pay for.

stonyc covers the RAM situation very well, so I won't bother adding anything on that.

 

[Jaffa Cake]

It kind of depends how much you'll be using it for gaming and how demanding the games you'll be playing are. The iBook isn't really something to use on demanding games. The PB would be better at that.

Certainly, the Powerbook is better suited to gaming than the iBook – however, the iBook should run Football Manager without any difficulties. I'm currently playing the 2005 version on my old iBook (a 500Mhz G3 with 384MB of RAM) and it runs fine, although obviously it's not suited to having a lot of Leagues running. I can't foresee the 2006 version being any more demanding – it is essentially the same game with updated statistics and a couple of new bells and whistles.