hrm damn now I cant decide 14" or 12" ibook :P

[WildCowboy]

I have both a 12" and a 14"...if specs were equal, I'd prefer the 14". Larger pixels make things easier to see. But if you're comparing a previous generation 14" with a current generation 12", it becomes more difficult. If you can try a 12" and don't have a problem with the screen size, you'll be able to have better specs.

 

[Marky_Mark]

This is how you piss people off like me. The 14" iBook is a wonderful computer, hence the reason I have 2. It comes with a bigger HD, SuperDrive 8x, slightly faster processor, etc. Yeah - it has the same resolution as the 12", but, hell, it's still a great computer and it's still a great peice of work. Think before you speak - you'll get a lot of people "round up" on the forums about saying the 14" iBook sucks when you've never had one. I hate you now.

MORAL OF THIS POST: Think before you speak.

Take a chill pill big guy - everyone's entitled to an opinion, and even if it's not stated out loud, you can't stop someone thinking it. Besides, the weight difference was a valid point, and what's to say that his/her opinion that a 12" book is less valid than your opinion that a 14" book is the one to go with?

Now me, I think the 12" is the one to go with...it's just...um...dinkier...and more like my old PowerBook Duo. Now if you had bad eyesight then that really was useless: 640x400, and to add insult to injury, at least 50% again what I paid for the iBook!

In terms of spec, the 12" gets BT, wireless etc, and for the extra 100 bucks the thread-owner could beef up the RAM and/or the HDD and get a rocking machine. At the end of the day, it's the screen size which is the key differentiator and only the thread-owner can decide which is best for them on that score.

 

[DanielNTX]

I went with a 12"

 

[Marky_Mark]

I went with a 12"

How did you get a superdrive in your iBook? If you went the PBFixit route, you're a braver soul than me!

 

[DanielNTX]

How i did it...

How did you get a superdrive in your iBook? If you went the PBFixit route, you're a braver soul than me!

I did it myself and bought the drive for $85 from mwave.com. I think it's the same cost at newegg.com. I also got an additional 1 gig of ram and a new 80 gig hard disk.

I originally posted what I did in the thread: Put your iBook12" on steroids

So I went out and did it. I purchased a current stock iBook 12" and cracked it open. They are definitely not user friendly for upgrades compared to the likes of Dell/IBM/HP where everything is modular and can be accessed from the outside easily. I removed about 30 to 40 screws to access everything.

I put in 1 gig of Crucial PC2700 ram, a Pioneer DVR-K05 8x8 Slim DVD Rewritable Drive (recognized as Apple installed/supported in OS X 10.4), and a FUJITSU MHV2080AH 80GB 5400RPM 8MB Cache hard disk.

The notebook cost me $900, the memory $109, the DVD drive $85 ad the hard disk was $110 for a total of $1204 shipped & no taxes.

For the Pioneer burner to fit, I had to modify the slot bezel from the combo drive by breaking out my dremmel tool and sanding off two small nipples that prevented the bezel from sitting flush with the new drive.

I also made a boo-boo when removing the top casing from the iBook... I accidently ripped of the connector jack off the system board for the right speaker. I was being over zealous removing the cables that were connected to the system board. I should have been more careful using needle nose pliers to detach the cables instead of my fingers. Anyways, after being pissed and getting over my stupidity, I broke out the soldering iron (with micro fine tip) and heated it up and then soldered the jack back in place. I did a quick test by booting the system up with the top casing and keyboard back together to see if the speaker would work again and luckily it did. Then I removed everything and installed the DVD drive and then the hard disk.

I would say the whole thing took me about 4 hours including reinstalling OS X. The hardest two things besides my mistake is removing the bottom casing (I used an old credit card) and keeping track of where all the screws go because they are different sizes and lengths.

Overclocking a Mac mini is much easier then these upgrades. As a comparison, I rate the difficulty of oc'ing a Mac mini 3 or 4 out of 10 and the upgrading of an iBook a 6 or 7 out of 10 (make that a 7 or 8 if you accidently rip off a connector jack from a system board).

Good luck to anyone who attempts this.

I was almost tempted to figure out how to change the bus speed from 133 to 142MHz, but decided against it because I couldn't find any information on the resistor settings on the internet. The clock multiplier is alreadly locked at 10X which is pretty high, but I bet it would be pretty easy to bump the bus speed from 133 to 142MHz to be like it's bigger 14" brother.

 

[Marky_Mark]

Sorry about that - I remember reading the reading the original thread now!

 

[dmetzcher]

I have a 12" iBook and picked it because it is smaller. That's what I wanted, but I can understand others not being into that. I wanted to be able to take it anywhere and the 14" just seemed much larger to me in the store.

Others have pointed out other great reasons thus far for you to get the 12" iBook, if you are still considering the two models you originally cited in your post. The fact that it supports Core Image and you can add more RAM makes a strong case for it.

 

[aquajet]

I did it myself and bought the drive for $85 from mwave.com. I think it's the same cost at newegg.com. I also got an additional 1 gig of ram and a new 80 gig hard disk.

Very cool. Soldering skills have gotten me out of jams on more than one occasion such as this.