Im scared!

[Project]

Man, as is the situation for many others, im a PC nut who has decided to switch to Mac. However, im in a bit of a predicament.

Im a student, so my budget is around £700... this is about the price of a 12" iBook, which for a long time has been the Mac that I believe id get due to the obvious price constraints etc. People have suggested a Mini, but honestly I want something portable that I can use at Wifi hotspots, the library etc. I will still have my 3ghz Dell PC in my dorm room, so the Mac is to be looked at as a complimentary machine to it...

Basically though, I keep seeing posts about how the iBook is slow etc..

Im not going to be using it for resource heavy apps. Its going to be for the organiser features, such as iCal (I like to keep organised, so this will be on 24-7), as well as Entourage and the Office Suite etc. I also intend to use iTunes and Safari a lot. As I said before, I will be using my Dell for games, video editing etc.

My question is, will the 12" iBook be sufficient? I know the new versions come with 512mb ram which is a bonus. But for my level of use, would it be better to grab myself a 1gb stick?

I just want to buy a Mac so badly, and start to experience for myself what so m any people praise.... and the iBook is a beautiful machine aestetically... im just worried that it will run slow etc... and I cant afford a Powerbook.

Thoughts?

 

[mpw]

...Im a student, so my budget is around £700... ...
Basically though, I keep seeing posts about how the iBook is slow etc..

Im not going to be using it for resource heavy apps. Its going to be for the organiser features, such as iCal (I like to keep organised, so this will be on 24-7), as well as Entourage and the Office Suite etc. I also intend to use iTunes and Safari a lot. As I said before, I will be using my Dell for games, video editing etc.

My question is, will the 12" iBook be sufficient? ...

Absouloutly. I've just fixed a dusty old G3 iBook 700Mhz, 384MB RAM and added an original Airport card. I'm using it right now wirelessly and it's not noticible slower for Safari iTunes etc. than my G5 iMac on a 512kbs ADSL connection. I do find Office a painful experience at times but I've got the original v.X version not 2004. I say go for it, I bet the new G4's are a hoot.

 

[Frisco]

The iBook will be fine for your needs. Enjoy!

 

[mpw]

...Im a student, so my budget is around £700...

Don't forget to shop at the online Edu. Store for the discount £750 will get you the 12" iBook and a 20Gb iPod.

 

[Project]

Well essentially I will be getting my iBook as part of a package my employer is offering. I basically get a voucher to spend at PC World for the amount of my choice, and pay it back out of my salary over three years and pay no interest. I *could* get a maxed out PowerBook if I wanted, but the monthly repayments would kill me lol. I thus opted for the £700 voucher.

The educational offer is very good though.

Quickly moving onto accessories - are those new Mouses worth having? I dont think ill be able to cope with this one mouse button nonsense lol.

 

[me_94501]

Man, as is the situation for many others, im a PC nut who has decided to switch to Mac. However, im in a bit of a predicament.

Im a student, so my budget is around £700... this is about the price of a 12" iBook, which for a long time has been the Mac that I believe id get due to the obvious price constraints etc. People have suggested a Mini, but honestly I want something portable that I can use at Wifi hotspots, the library etc. I will still have my 3ghz Dell PC in my dorm room, so the Mac is to be looked at as a complimentary machine to it...

Basically though, I keep seeing posts about how the iBook is slow etc..

Im not going to be using it for resource heavy apps. Its going to be for the organiser features, such as iCal (I like to keep organised, so this will be on 24-7), as well as Entourage and the Office Suite etc. I also intend to use iTunes and Safari a lot. As I said before, I will be using my Dell for games, video editing etc.

My question is, will the 12" iBook be sufficient? I know the new versions come with 512mb ram which is a bonus. But for my level of use, would it be better to grab myself a 1gb stick?

I just want to buy a Mac so badly, and start to experience for myself what so m any people praise.... and the iBook is a beautiful machine aestetically... im just worried that it will run slow etc... and I cant afford a Powerbook.

Thoughts?

The iBook is not slow. For your purposes, it is a perfect machine out of the box.

 

[mad jew]

But for my level of use, would it be better to grab myself a 1gb stick?

That would be ideal, but just another 512MB stick would make a noticeable difference that I'm pretty sure you'd appreciate.

 

[Ugg]

Ram is the single easiest way to increase the performance of a 'book. I've got 786 in my 12" 1.5 ghz PB and it's fine although there are times when another 512 would be nice.

I tried out the mouse today at the Apple Store and it's very nice. The little scroll ball thingie works great and I'll be getting one soon, but there are lots of good and smaller mice for lots less. The Mighty mouse is the same size as a regular mouse and not very convenient for lugging around. I think you'll really like the trackpad on your iBook and may find you don't need a mouse.

 

[tikibangout]

Unless it bothers you that you have to hold Ctrl to right click. Thats the one thing I don't like about macs. Thank god for the mighty mouse though. I wonder how it compares to MS Intellimouse I use for my PC.

 

[FFTT]

The best way to improve any Mac's performance is by adding RAM.

For the use you've indicated almost any USB mouse will do.

The new Mighty Mouse is quite attractive, but you could get an Apple external
keyboard and mouse for not much more.

I have both a single button Apple mouse and a logitech 2 botton scroll mouse
and both are fine.

You have no reason at all to fear an iBook or OSX,

In fact you'll soon wonder what took you so long.

 

[FocusAndEarnIt]

You'll be fine, trust me, here I am using my iBook G4 14" 1.42GHz w/ 512MB running Mail, Safari, iChat, and iTunes faster than my Athlon XP 3200+... so it seems.

It'll be great for you, the new iBooks are sweet!

 

[macbaseball]

If I were you i would just get a gig chip from a third party RAM vendor. You will feel the speed difference, and with the low prices of RAM these days, I would just do it. RAM is the best way to multi-task and it sounds like that's what you plan on doing. Also, in the future if you decide that you want to max it out, then you would have to go through the hassle of selling the 512 chip and upgrade. That gets messy. I think it would be best to just max it out, and enjoy it.

 

[andy8408]

beware PC World

Make sure PC world dont fob you off with an 'old' model. The store nearest to me is still selling 1ghz powerbooks!!!!

I'd avoid them like the plague.

 

[MacSA]

Do you have any choice of where you can sepnd a voucher? You could ask to get one to spend at John Lewis as they have a free 2 year warranty on computers. I agree with the previous posters comments on PC World.

 

[Project]

Unfortunately no - it can only be used in a PC World store. However, the warranty and support through this means is better than it would be for a normal customer buying the same item from PC World.

I have been looking at the PC World website everyday and up until yesterday they were selling the prior models, the 1.2ghz, at full price. Yesterday however theyve just knocked £100 off the price of it in a summer sale. There is no evidence that the new iBooks are there yet, but im presuming they want to sell their existing stock before they put the new ones up. I have time though, as I wont be getting my voucher until mid September I believe.

What im looking to do though, is only have the iBook for a year anyway. My uni course requires that I spend a placement year in fulltime employment, so I will very likely be leaving my current job this time next year. If you leave the group you have to buy the laptop at its remaining value - which will be around £500. The iBook will then be physically mine, and im confident that I could easily sell it in a years time for around £400 and put that towards an Intel iBook, which im hoping will be much more powerful AND I could get a lot cheaper through the educational store. If all goes well, I hope to get the new iBook in a years time at essentially little extra cost (the educational store sells 12" at just over £600)

 

[swy32x]

Blergh.

Don't use Entourage, Mail all the way mate!

 

[shadowmoses]

I don't understand how so many newbie's get the idea that the iBook is slow it is fine for most people, and is very fast by most apple user's standards.....

The 512mb that comes as standard should be fine initially and if you feel you need some more buy an extra 512 or 1gb stick and put it in yourself, its a doddle,

ShadOW

 

[lizard79]

the iBook is a fine machine - got mine 2 days ago..
the only thing i complain is, that the screen is to dark for my taste..

 

[Deepdale]

... Basically though, I keep seeing posts about how the iBook is slow etc.. ... Im not going to be using it for resource heavy apps. Its going to be for the organiser features, such as iCal ... I also intend to use iTunes and Safari a lot.

My question is, will the 12" iBook be sufficient? I know the new versions come with 512mb ram which is a bonus. But for my level of use, would it be better to grab myself a 1gb stick?

I have spent adequate time looking into various aspects of the performance of both newly released iBooks and I seriously doubt that you would be disenchanted given your anticipated usage.

The models available to me both had 1GB of RAM, so it might be a wise choice to increase the preinstalled memory. Remember that the vast majority of people do not get themselves all knotted up because one computer opens an application in 5 seconds versus 3, or burns an iTunes CD in audio format in 8 minutes as opposed to 7.

Let rational thinking rule your decision making process. I believe you will be pleased ... buy confidently and enjoy the experience.

 

[barneygumble]

i have a 3.2 pc and a 1.25 mini, the pc has 2.0gb of ram and the mini 512mb unless i am really taxing the mini i cannot tell the differance

 

[Mord]

Man, as is the situation for many others, im a PC nut who has decided to switch to Mac. However, im in a bit of a predicament.

Im a student, so my budget is around £700... this is about the price of a 12" iBook, which for a long time has been the Mac that I believe id get due to the obvious price constraints etc. People have suggested a Mini, but honestly I want something portable that I can use at Wifi hotspots, the library etc. I will still have my 3ghz Dell PC in my dorm room, so the Mac is to be looked at as a complimentary machine to it...

Basically though, I keep seeing posts about how the iBook is slow etc..

Im not going to be using it for resource heavy apps. Its going to be for the organiser features, such as iCal (I like to keep organised, so this will be on 24-7), as well as Entourage and the Office Suite etc. I also intend to use iTunes and Safari a lot. As I said before, I will be using my Dell for games, video editing etc.

My question is, will the 12" iBook be sufficient? I know the new versions come with 512mb ram which is a bonus. But for my level of use, would it be better to grab myself a 1gb stick?

I just want to buy a Mac so badly, and start to experience for myself what so m any people praise.... and the iBook is a beautiful machine aestetically... im just worried that it will run slow etc... and I cant afford a Powerbook.

Thoughts?

if you dont like your ibook i'll trade you my pc https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/142190/

 

[dmw007]

The 12" iBook G4 will be fine for your needs. Upgrading the memory to 1GB would be recommended (you can always use more RAM).

Congrats on the decision to try Mac- you will never want to switch back!

 

[bodeh6]

The iBook is excellent for the above mentioned items. You don't need a Duel G5 to run Safari and iTunes. I was using one at the Apple Store and found it plenty fast. Just as fast as opening programs and files as the Powerbooks. Unless you are applying filters with Photoshop or encoding video, you will not notice much difference if any between the current iBooks and the current Powerbooks.

 

[Project]

Blergh.

Don't use Entourage, Mail all the way mate!

The general consensus ive read on these boards is that Mail is a little lacking? Ill obviously try them both before deciding though of course.

In terms of updating the Ram - will it not invalidate my warranty to be unscrewing it? And is it difficult? Im pretty competent with PCs and putting them together etc so I wouldnt have thought so...

 

[Chundles]

The general consensus ive read on these boards is that Mail is a little lacking? Ill obviously try them both before deciding though of course.

In terms of updating the Ram - will it not invalidate my warranty to be unscrewing it? And is it difficult? Im pretty competent with PCs and putting them together etc so I wouldnt have thought so...

It will not invalidate your warranty - the instructions are in the iBook user manual and it's a piece of cake, take out the battery, lift off the keyboard, slide out the airport card and holder, plug in the ram, reverse - easy.

And I'd forget Entourage simply because Spotlight cannot index it because of the way Microsoft has chosen to archive the messages as one big-arse database. Being able to type in a few words and have the exact message you want right there is very, very handy. For example, I have thousands of messages in Mail but was having trouble finding a certain one where a mate gave me his ICQ number, I typed in his name and "ICQ" into spotlight and BAM, the message was there, right at the top of the list.

I'm using a 1.2GHz iBook with 512MB RAM and it is plenty fast enough for me, usually have 4 or 5 programmes open and running at the same time and it doesn't skip a beat, but then.... more RAM is always handy.