Refurbished Powerbook G4 12" Rev A?

[heljy]

I am considering a portable machine to tide me over until the G5 Powerbooks arrive (hopefully in a year's time).

I saw from Apple's online store that they have the 12" Rev A Powerbook Refurbished going only for $1199. That would be $300 cheaper than the current Rev B 12" that I can get for $1499 with the educational discount. Price is a important factor because I do not plan to use this for more than 2 years, rather a mac before the G5s. I considered the G4 iBook but decided against it because it does not officially support external monitor at higher resolutions. Since I will be using it heavily connected to an external monitor and keyboard/mouse, this is also another important factor.

Another option would be the PowerMac G4 which goes for the same price of $1199 on the educational site. I know that this would be the better deal in terms of performance/price ratio, but I am also considering the portability of the powerbook. Honestly, I do not plan to use it out of the house often, but since I will be graduating from college next spring, it would be much more convienent to bring a notebook then to worry about 2 desktops (dell and the powermac).

So I am asking if anyone have any experience with Apple's Refurbished products, especially the 12" Powerbook. Please give your comments.

Thanks!

 

[jamdr]

Refurbished PowerBook seems like a good idea

I once bought a refurbished iBook G3 700 Mhz from Apple. It was in pretty good condition, although it had some scratches on it--no dead pixels or anything like that. It came packaged like a new mac, though, which was nice. I think that the Aluminum PowerBooks (i.e. the 12" Rev A PowerBook) would be a good computer to buy refurbished because the aluminum does not really scratch, it only dents. But Apple wouldn't sell a dented PowerBook, so it would probably be in very good condition, cosmetically. That's a good price for one, too.

In fact, I've noticed the cheapest place to get a refurbished Mac is Apple. Isn't that weird? You'd think that the cheapest place would be some third party company online, but almost always, the Apple online store has the best prices on used Macs.

 

[OziMac]

What about G4 iBooks?

Refurbished Rev A Powerbooks look pretty good, but you may as well go for the cheaper 12" 800MHz G4 iBook - it's brand new and probably has better resale value for when you upgrade later next year or whenever. Plus it has USB 2.0 and Panther preinstalled. Its performane is effectively the same as the Rev A Powerbook and it has the same amount of L2 cache and the same RAM expandability ceiling. Anyway, stuff to think about, hope your purchase is a happy one.

 

[fussball]

If your major reason for skipping an iBook is the lack of support for higher external screen resolutions, you should remember there is a software mod that can be done that will allow higher resolutions for the external monitor. Right now I am working on a 14.1" iBook with a 17" external monitor running at 1280x960 pixels.. the iBook is at 1024x768. there are no problems doing this, other than quartz extreme being disabled (though I can enable it still... just runs slowly) Note this is on an iBook w/ 16 mb vram, and one with 32 mb would have no problems with QE at these dual resolutions. I have heard (though this may not be true) that the iBook g4's have a slightly better video card than the 12" AlBook

 

[heljy]

Originally posted by fussball
If your major reason for skipping an iBook is the lack of support for higher external screen resolutions, you should remember there is a software mod that can be done that will allow higher resolutions for the external monitor. Right now I am working on a 14.1" iBook with a 17" external monitor running at 1280x960 pixels.. the iBook is at 1024x768. there are no problems doing this, other than quartz extreme being disabled (though I can enable it still... just runs slowly) Note this is on an iBook w/ 16 mb vram, and one with 32 mb would have no problems with QE at these dual resolutions. I have heard (though this may not be true) that the iBook g4's have a slightly better video card than the 12" AlBook

That and the fact that the ibook does not operate safely under clamshell mode(display closed)? I would be using it mostly on the desk with external mointor, mouse and keyboard. If only Apple would come up with a low end desktop that comes without a monitor...