Hello all,
Danger! Will : You are on a Mac forum and you are convincing a student to buy a PC. It does not take a genius to figure out that you don't like Macs because if you liked Macs, you would know that once you use a Windows machine and see how buggy it is...you never recommend a PC to somone ever again. That being said...
David : You were sold on the Toshiba laptop. Why? Please consider this fact: You are about to buy a machine that runs an operating system that has the worst reputation... and is governed by Microsoft, who call security exploits in their operating system, features. Now lets look at the iBook compared to the portégé...
* Toshiba 1 GHz.
iBook : 800 Mhz.
(800 MHz Mac is = to a 1.6 GHz PC)
* Windows XP Pro
Mac OS X 10.3
(Ask yourself, stable and secure vs unstable and riddled with bugs called features)
* No optical drive
DVD ROM/CD Drive
(Why the hell is the Toshiba not coming with a CD drive? How do they expect you to restore your computer's OS after Windows crashed because your machine was exploited because of the cool features)
* Tyrant 32 MB
ATI Mobility 9200
(What is a Tyrant?)
* Firewire Ports : Zilch, Zero, Nada!
One FireWire 400 port at up to 400 mbps
Dave you said this...
I need firewire for the R100 b/c it doesn't have an optical drive installed and I have an external smartdisk cdrw which I could use if they installed a firewire port.
I really just need something for typing in class, but something extremely small, but comftorable, and with VERY LONG battery life. I would also like to keep my music library with me, and maybe watch a couple divx movies off the machine at night.
The iBook exceeds this requirement. I am pretty sure carrying an external CD drive will be cumbersome. Also your drive is Firewire and and you will be paying close to $80 for a decent reputable Firewire PCMCIA card.
About the battery life: The battery life is long on the Toshiba only because it not powering a DVD/CD drive. It is also long because Toshiba is power consuming. I have messed with 3 Toshibas the other day and they are power / battery hungry. I'm speaking from experience. I have seen these tests and when they test the battery, the laptop is sitting there with basically every feature turned off. Just like benixau said.
About the graphics card : Intel what? Apple users may not have a huge assortment of games, which is slowly changing, but with the Toshiba laptop, you won't have much of an assortment at all. That graphics card runs games poorly.
Bottom line: I'm a Programmer / Specialist and trust me, the iBook is a much better computer. You will receive better support with the iBook. You will be running the best operating system ever to be developed. Last but not least, you won't be chained to Microsoft. You will have more possibilites with the iBook and less Windows Update sessions if you were to go with the Toshiba.
Take my word for it, get the iBook!
I just can't pass up such an amazing price... do you think there is a new model coming out soon, and that's why I am getting such a large discount? I could hold out another month or two for a newer model even if just a slight speed increase.
