Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Btw, I forgot to add you could probably get close to $1000 for that laptop you mentioned, given it's the fastest G4 and has 2 GB of RAM, assuming it's in good condition.

I dunno.... I'm typing on my Beige G3, since my 1.6 GHz Pentium M Toshiba died.... it's upgraded to a 500 MHz G3 CPU, has 768 MB RAM and much faster and larger hard drives than the 6 GB it shipped with, but I find it quite usable and enjoyable.

It does most everything all right.. web, email, DivX movie... except it can't run Diablo II anymore since I've been having trouble booting into OS 9 with extensions on with the G4 in place, and OS X can only run OpenGL which is coded horrifically on the Mac (for D2 that is) and so is dog slow. Plays Quake III fine though :D

Even Lightroom seems to run just fine... and I've got Photoshop 3, 5, 6, 7, CS, CS2 and CS3 running just fine on it. Aperture was a bit sluggish... but it's also not a very good application (I was using Aperture 1); it's a shame they don't make ACDSee Pro for the Mac... it's vastly superior in my opinion to Aperture, and still much better than Lightroom.. and a lot cheaper.

Sorry, a tangent. Anyway, my point is my upgraded 10 year old machine is still running perfectly, sitting under a 19" CRT and pushing 1440x1050 res (highest res I can run at 85 Hz), which isn't bad.
 
My Ti powerbook, and powerbook G4 were troops - they lasted a good 4+ years, and I sold them on ebay, in perfect working condition. Now I regret that decision. The MBs and MBPs have given me nothing but problems - they typically crap out after a year (nice coincidence)

I had my 3rd mbp die today, apparently a GPU failure as someone here mentioned. Apple's quality has really gone down the drain - I would rather pay twice the amount for this POS if they would make it absolutely reliable (3 bad mbps and 1 bad mb.. come on!)

As a 'Pro' user I find it absolutely unacceptable.
 
My PB 12" has been going for over 4 years without a single hardware failure. Even the hard drive is original! The G4 is really feeling slow these days though, but I don't like how Apple only has 13.3" notebooks.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.