Lots Of Questions

You can extend the factory warranty an additional 2 years with AppleCare but there is no provision for accidental damage.

 

Probably it would be stupid to go back to 32-bit

None on the market. Only developer versions.

That's anyones guess. Probably an Intel chip. I doubt you'll ever see a G5.

Maybe. You'll have to wait an see.

 

OK, the G4 is a PowerPC processor made by Freescale (nee Motorola), the G5 is a PowerPC processor made by IBM. The G5 is characterised by a higher clockspeed and front-side bus at the expense of heat output and power consumption. The G4 has lower clockspeed and front-side bus but a much shorter pipeline meaning that at similar clockspeeds, the G4 and G5 can perform very closely, depending of course on the benchmark you use.

In the past, each processor has had just one controlling "core" - where all the calculations were done. Dual-core processors have just one "chip" but two processing centres, it's like they've taken two brains and squeezed them into one head.

The G5 now has two configurations, single processor dual core machines (ie two brains in one head) or dual processor dual core machine (four brains in two heads).

The G5 is waay too hot to fit into a notebook with the formfactor of the PowerBook or iBook, it is however a decent mobile processor (no it's not the best) offering good battery life and pperformance (the laptop processors are faster than the G4 in most minis). The G4 in the PowerBook is not a screamer compared to the Pentium M but it performs well, and has the bonus that it comes with OS X.

Apple does not cover accidental damage but offers a good warranty that covers you for 3 years called AppleCare. All Apple products come with one year's worth of AppleCare and you can purchase the extended warranty at anytime within that first year to extend your cover.

Some of the Apple resellers like Best Buy and um, I don't know any others - I don't live in the states, offer the sort of warranty you are after but then you are forced to deal with people who know sweet bugger all about Macs.

 

If you really want a Mac notebook, it depends on what you're using it for. Plenty of people who do office type work and internet/email use G3 ibooks, which are super cheap these days (I highly suggest refurbished older macs from places like www.macofalltrades.com--I bought a G4 ibook there and it was cheap and has been running fine for the past year). If you're looking for a workhorse laptop, if you can afford a higher end G$ Powerbook, go for it, otherwise your plan to stick with your Dell sounds good.