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crazylb1

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 9, 2002
36
0
Boulder
OK I just came back from CompUSA where I was helping my aunt 'switch,' she was going to get the 14" iBook Combo Drive model and so we asked the guy to see if they had one, he left for a few minutes and came back with a strange look and said "um, we don't have any in stock, in fact none of our 200 + stores have any."

Now this is curious to me, I haven't heard any rumblings about an ibook update, only powermac or display. If new ibooks are coming next month, i dont rembmer it being usual protocol that they go EOL 3 weeks in advance???

What do you think? Do any of you have any connections so that you can check if this guy doesnt know what he's talking about or it is EOL?
 
blue tooth makes since, but the guy doesn't know what he's talking about, I played with an iBook art CompUSA yesterday. It was on display though.
 
Originally posted by daRAT


God don't tease *grin*, an ibook with a G4..I'd have one within an hour.:D

I suspect he meant new iBooks, and also new G4 Towers... not iBooks containing G4's... but it certainly would be nice.
 
I wouldn't read too much into it. At my CompUSA, we have NO iBooks, 1 G4 Ti, NO Powermacs (that is understandable), but buttloads of iMacs and eMacs.

-Pete
 
Re: EOL'd ibooks!???

Originally posted by crazylb1
If new ibooks are coming next month, i dont rembmer it being usual protocol that they go EOL 3 weeks in advance???
There was a rumor recently that the new PowerMacs would be announced on Aug 5, so if that's right, it's only a week away...
 
Various rumors circulating for awhile now have been that the 14" ibook has not sold well. A G4 upgrade to it(as has been rumored) would not be such a bad assumption if this is true. If true, at least up the max memory!!!! 640 MB as a max allowed in a laptop these days is ridiculous if you want to keep it for a few years and be fairly useful and snappy.
 
Originally posted by metrolotus
I think there not going to carry Mac products anymore now that the apple stores are out
What a beautiful thought.. too much to ask for, though.
If all the CompUSA's are as bad the one here, they do more harm than good. With a store full of employees, maybe 3 or 4 can spell Mac, and of those, not one really knows what they are talking about. They generally mean well, but that doesn't cut it. Keeping current seems like it should be a job requirement, and if so, they fail. And if you have an older Mac, God help you. If CompUSA doesn't sell it, they pretend it doesn't exist. Or maybe they're just that uninformed. I don't know which is worse.
Your mileage may vary, of course. But since the local CompUSA keeps getting high marks for their Apple section, (SOMEONE has got to be stuffing a ballot box somewhere, or Apple customers are as clueless as these guys are) I have to assume that most CompUSA's are as bad or worse.

Now, for the disclaimers: This is a generalization. Generalizations suck. They're called generalizations, though, because they are generally true. No one was attacked personally here. If you feel you have been attacked, you have a guilty conscience.
 
Originally posted by IndyGopher

What a beautiful thought.. too much to ask for, though.
If all the CompUSA's are as bad the one here, they do more harm than good.

As the song says, "I second that emotion"

I've always felt that my local CompUSA gave Apple a bad name. This store seems to have a talent for finding the rudest and most uninformed employees available.

Montgomeryville, PA...check it out! :D
 
I wish that everyone would come to the store in Monroeville PA.

We have an awesome ASC, and 4 out of the 5 salesmen own macs. There are even a few switchers in the rest of the store.

We are by far the best Apple CompUSA that I have ever seen. But I have to admit, Buffalo NY has an awesome Mac section with a PROJECTION SCREEN!! Cool beans.

My COMPUSA even hosts a MUG group in Pittsburgh.

-Pete
 
Maybe Apple is finally doing a massive recall of all the ibooks with combo drives,because the drive only has a two month life expectacy for many people?
Anyone checked out the Apple support site lately?Lots of questions,not many answers!Both the superdrives,and ibook combo drives are turning out to be real pieces of crap!
Real world,unglorified observation,and personal experience.
 
i like that-there g3

Originally posted by IndyGopher


I suspect he meant new iBooks, and also new G4 Towers... not iBooks containing G4's... but it certainly would be nice.

would it?

1. the 700 MHz sahara g3 is snappy. i've been using my
friend's (256 meg RAM) for daily tasks (browsing, email,
writing) -- and it's WAY faster than my Lombard 400 MHz
powerbook.

2. the g4s run a lot hotter. the g3 doesn't need a fan and
would probably need a larger enclosure to cool (yuck -- i
like the 12" version)

3. the g4 draws 4x as much power as the g3 (24w vs.
6w, i think) -- battery life would suffer

4. i believe the g3 has a lot of upward movement for MHz
increase. IBM's been touting that 1+ GHz sahara. how cool
would that be? i suspect it's an apple marketing decision, not
a technical issue, keeping that out of our hands.

so what would i like to see in the ibook?

1. a faster g3 sahara chip
2. a better video card (4xagp, 32 meg RAM, to take full
advantage of jaguar)

those two alone would make the thing haul ass. perhaps
an option for faster bus and DDR RAM -- but the machine
i've described is fast enough for me.

i already have a dual 500 MHz g4 w/ 1 gig RAM for doing
protools work. i just need something for normal usage.
 
I agree zimv20 those would be great updates to the iBook line, but we'll never get a 32mb card for the iBook until the PowerBook gets a 64mb card. I have a PowerBook G4 first edition and my next laptop will be an iBook. This just leaves me wondering what the true potential of the iBook could be.
 
Of course they just EOL'd it... I just bought a refurb 12" 700 iBook, and it's coming in this week.

When the 14" G4 comes out next week you can all thank me. :)
 
Re: i like that-there g3

Originally posted by zimv20


2. the g4s run a lot hotter. the g3 doesn't need a fan and
would probably need a larger enclosure to cool (yuck -- i
like the 12" version)

First, all of the improvements you listed would be great, I hope we see them soon in the iBooks. However, I keep seeing comments like the one above, and I just don't understand what they are trying to convey.. you do know that the iBooks have fans in them, right? I have 2 of them disassembled on my bench as I write this... and I promise, there are fans in there. Now, they might need bigger fans, and beefier heatsinks to handle G4 CPU's, but the notion that there is no fan in the dual USB iBooks is just... well.. wrong.
 
Re: Re: i like that-there g3

Originally posted by IndyGopher


you do know that the iBooks have fans in them, right? I have 2 of them disassembled on my bench as I write this... and I promise, there are fans in there. Now, they might need bigger fans, and beefier heatsinks to handle G4 CPU's, but the notion that there is no fan in the dual USB iBooks is just... well.. wrong.

well how 'bout that? i didn't know. i asked a friend w/ one
and he said 'no fan.' but i just stuck my ear to the one i'm
using and could hear one.

my bad... i'll go with: it'd need _more_ cooling power w/
a g4, possibly increasing the case size.

btw, you guys know what i _really_ want? an ibook w/
a 10" screen, and a body to match. i like small. my eyes
are good enough (my first mac had a 9" screen and
it was fine).

i'd also like an option to downgrade the superdrive to
reading CDs only. i don't need the other business.
 
You all do realize that the Sahara G3 will beat a comparable-clocked G4 in pretty much anything thats not AltiVec-optimized, don't you? For one thing it's got a 4-stage pipe, and it's also got 512k of on-die L2 which I think is connected by a 256-bit bus.
 
errr...according to the apple store, they're shipping new iBooks within 3 days, 15 days if you custom configure. That means the iBooks are NOT EOL, right?

Just a stupid question from a stupid newbie

-----
"Its not having what you want, its wanting what you got..."
 
Not all CompUSAs are bad...any with an Apple employee in them are quite good in fact. I purchased my Flat Panel iMac from them and was third in the waiting list. Got mine 12 days after getting on the waiting list January 31st. Remember how hard those were to get? And this Apple employee knew quite a few things about the Mac platform. He used to be a PC person himself!

Originally posted by IndyGopher

What a beautiful thought.. too much to ask for, though.
If all the CompUSA's are as bad the one here, they do more harm than good. With a store full of employees, maybe 3 or 4 can spell Mac, and of those, not one really knows what they are talking about. They generally mean well, but that doesn't cut it. Keeping current seems like it should be a job requirement, and if so, they fail. And if you have an older Mac, God help you. If CompUSA doesn't sell it, they pretend it doesn't exist. Or maybe they're just that uninformed. I don't know which is worse.
Your mileage may vary, of course. But since the local CompUSA keeps getting high marks for their Apple section, (SOMEONE has got to be stuffing a ballot box somewhere, or Apple customers are as clueless as these guys are) I have to assume that most CompUSA's are as bad or worse.

Now, for the disclaimers: This is a generalization. Generalizations suck. They're called generalizations, though, because they are generally true. No one was attacked personally here. If you feel you have been attacked, you have a guilty conscience.
 
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