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Sell 12" PowerBook and buy Dell Mini 9 and Mac Mini?

A

AaronE

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Dec 31, 2006
393
78
North Carolina
I'm selling my 12" PowerBook, but I'm not sure what to put the funds toward. I want to get a basic Dell Mini 9 and upgrade the ram then put Leopard on it. I would still have some money left over that I could use toward an older Intel Mac Mini. I mainly want this so I'll be guaranteed to have something to run Snow Leopard on.

Does this seem like a good idea? The PowerBook isn't very portable and the Dell would be along with OS X goodness.
 
well i dont really think that a hackingtosh is a good idea, never the less i would spend the money on buying a new mac mini. i dont see the point of buying a dell mini (i can only guess at least £300) and then a second hand mac mini (again, only guess at least £150) so you might as well buy a new mini, since they will most certainly run os x 10.6.

thats my opinion, although i am not against a hackingtosh, i believe that it is wrong to put such a smooth, good fast running OS on in an ugly dell machine.
 
AaronE said:
The PowerBook isn't very portable and the Dell would be along with OS X goodness.
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If you find the 12" not very portable, the 9", 10", and 12" dell minis will seem the same way. Perhaps an ipod Touch is more your thing for portability.
 
Nah I have a iPhone and it's good for mobile use, but the PowerBook is just kinda big compared to what I wanna carry back and forth to school.
 
techound1 said:
If you find the 12" not very portable, the 9", 10", and 12" dell minis will seem the same way. Perhaps an ipod Touch is more your thing for portability.
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The Dell Mini 9 is quite a lot smaller and lighter than a Powerbook 12".... FWIW I do reach a threshold where I take my Eee around with me more readily than I did my iBook 12". The difference is slightly more pronounced in that case, but not so much so. I still don't make my Eee a standing component of my briefcase or anything, not in the way that I never really do much outside the house except go running and not have my iPhone with me.

I think the biggest nuisance of the plan would be having your stuff split between two computers, whereas you could probably use your PB as your basecamp. It's a nuisance that mostly my songs and pictures and stuff are not on my Eee.

The Dell Mini will be about a wash with your PB -- perhaps faster in a few places and most likely slower in a few as well. Plus you have to deal with all the nuisances of a hackintosh -- uncertain driver updates, worries about when you can run updates, etc.

Also I don't think the Dell Mini is really designed to be held onto for years and years in quite the way of a Powerbook.

Otherwise, more power to you... the Dell $199 deals are very tempting.
 
mkrishnan said:
The Dell Mini will be about a wash with your PB -- perhaps faster in a few places and most likely slower in a few as well. Plus you have to deal with all the nuisances of a hackintosh -- uncertain driver updates, worries about when you can run updates, etc.
Click to expand...

Thats where all the fun is. lol I like a challenge when it comes to that and dealing with the hackintosh.
 
Depending on how great of a condition your PowerBook is you'll probably get around $400-$500 for it. A good 16GB dell mini 9 with all the fixings is around $350 so that won't leave you with much to play with for a mac mini. If you don't want to spend a lot of money, you might want to reconsider. Regardless, the mini 9 running leopard is a really great computer, and it's super easy to hack, but I would really do some cost analysis before selling your machine.
 
AaronE said:
No but when carrying several college and highschool textbooks around it just doesn't fit into the equation. :)
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Yeah, I can vouch. Alone the 12" pb isn't bad at all, after all its 4.6 lbs. When you add in a textbook, lunch, and a binder or two it gets to be a hassle.

That aside, personally I see the dell as a step down. I don't know what you do on your laptop at school, but for me the 12" screen is perfect for taking notes in ppt, word & messing around with excel. Any smaller than that and I would start to have problems. Plus typing on those things looks uncomfortable.

I think my situation is similar to yours; I commute w/a laptop (by bike) everyday to campus and experience a heavy backpack. On top of that my laptop is running kinda slow (hulu barely works at an acceptable frame rate, office 08 takes forever to load...) for some of the things I do and I want to be able to use Snow Leopard in a few weeks/months.

Imo, if you bought an imac you would be able to enjoy it longer than a mac mini. Plus it would save you the trouble of finding a monitor. As for the heavy computer... carry one less textbook if you can. That would be the approximate weight saved by buying a netbook.
 
Find a used netbook on craigslist for a couple of hundred bucks and keep your powerbook?

If you're going to be screwing around on the internet, a hackbook air is fine. If you're going to be doing any serious typing, most netbook keyboards will prove to be a challenge. The msi wind has an atrocious keyboard, the lenovo ideapad is slightly better. The HP mini one is the best netbook keyboard, but is not the easiest to hack, nor does it have the most features.

Seriously put your hands on some keyboards before you make any decision.

BTW, if you do decide to hack a netbook, the apple stickers that come with ipods are perfectly proportioned.
 
How good are these netbooks anyways? I'm considering buying one for a 9 year old family member, to have her use as a computer. Does it lack a lot that standard laptops have? Can the be connected to a printer and can software be installed on them?
 
Anonymouslives said:
How good are these netbooks anyways? I'm considering buying one for a 9 year old family member, to have her use as a computer. Does it lack a lot that standard laptops have? Can the be connected to a printer and can software be installed on them?
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If you want a detailed answer to the question, then you should really post a separate thread, but... in short, most netbooks are available with Windows now. They can run normal Windows software, and you can connect the whole host of normal Windows accessories, including printers. The major thing they lack in comparison to other notebooks is that they don't have optical drives.

There are also notebooks with various Linux distributions on them -- with those, the answers are still generally that you can install software and add printers and so on, but it might be more work, depending on the system.

If you installed OS X on it, that would involve some hacking, but then it would generally run most OS X Intel Binary software.

Speedwise, they compare loosely to P4 era computers or G4s on the OS X side. They're quite usable but not fast by any stretch of the imagination.
 
A netbook is used primarily for...wait for it....the internet. They usually have atom processors, windows xp, usb ports, wireless b/g internet, and a gig of ram. They do not have disc drives.

Printers with usb connections will work with them. To install software, you either have to download it via the internet, get an external usb disk drive, or use another computer to copy a disk to an external usb drive/stick.
 
kindablue09 said:
Imo, if you bought an imac you would be able to enjoy it longer than a mac mini. Plus it would save you the trouble of finding a monitor. As for the heavy computer... carry one less textbook if you can. That would be the approximate weight saved by buying a netbook.
Click to expand...

An iMac wouldn't really fit my needs. I already have a monitor I use with my Hackintosh I recently built so that would be covered. I really like the PowerBook, but it is getting slow and I'd like to get money out of it while I still can. And a netbook would be something fun to tinker and mess with which is kinda why I want it.
 
I would keep the PowerBook. Those 12 inchers are probably the best laptop Apple has ever made.

If it is what you want, go for it. But personally, I don't see the point. Is the powerbooks really so big and heavy that you can't take it to class? Then, what is there that you can do on a netbook that you can't do on your iphone? word processing? are you really taking that many notes? if that's all you're doing, i would invest in a 56 cent paper notebook before blowing a few hundred on two(!) new computers. or man up and just lug your powerbook.
 
I love my netbook, but don't go with the mini 9, get the new mini 10 or other 10" netbook. I'm extremely impressed with my Lenovo S10, quality and performance (w/ upgraded ram). It runs OSx86 quite well minus non working Ethernet.

True, you'll have to worry about future updates making something not work, but 10.5.6 is great and stable so I don't really need any updates.

The ASUS and MSI netbooks are nice as well as the New Acer 10"
 
AaronE said:
What would be the cheapest netbook that would run OS X? I'd be willing to go with Acer or something.
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I would pick from the Lenovo, MSI, or Dell Mini 10.

The Lenovo and MSI are in this list.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...Value=7245:46386&PropertyCodeValue=7228:45068

Also you can check out this lis to see what feature work with what.

http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2008/12/17/osx-netbook-compatib.html

I could care less about wired ethernet so I went with the Lenovo. But you may want the wired Ethernet and don't care if the headphone jack works or not. So the Wind may work for you. I didn't pick the Dell at the time because I wanted a 10" Screen, the Dell mini only had 8.9" screen at the time. But now that it has a 10" screen that may be the way to go since ALL the features seem to work with the Dells.
 
AaronE said:
What would be the cheapest netbook that would run OS X? I'd be willing to go with Acer or something.
Click to expand...

Dell has mini 9's in the outlet store for $169 today. Stock fluctuates so if you don't find one, check back often.
 
I was looking at the MSI Wind and it looks nice and not a lot of trouble to setup. I want something where WiFi works out of the box. But I wish I could find the Mini 9 for that cheap. But with all the upgrades I'd have to do get it up to speed the Wind seems like the best choice. 10" screen 1GB ram and a 160GB hd for $309 seems decent.
 
I'd sooner get a 7200 rpm drive for your powerbook, and keep on truckin'.

Not wanting to keep beating a dead horse....

And when you delve deep into osx, tinkering with the OS, you will doubtlessly learn things about it, I admit.

Again, unless it's no more than a learning project or hobby, I would sit down and do some typing on the models you're looking at before you buy one.

And again, you could pick up some deals on craigslist on a used model. Consult the boing boing chart about pros and cons before you make a decision as well.
 
Yea I'm really liking the MSI Wind and I doubt I would have any trouble setting it up. I've built two OSX86 machines and haven't really had a problem getting leopard to run.

But I think I want to get the MSI Wind and then use the left over money to put toward an older Mac Mini/iMac G5 or something of that nature.
 
DarthTreydor said:
a 12" powerbook is too big? maybe you could sell it and invest in a gym membership.
Click to expand...

LOL...

That reminds me one day at the VJs forum when this guy wanted to play a video at the exact moment in some song. He wanted to invest in all sort of equipment and midi sincronization.

The guy just needed to press one key in his computer to trigger the video with the sound effect, that was it and I was telling the guy: how lazy you can be man? is just one key and all you have to do is to move ONE FINGER!!! that is why people do something called rehersal!!! and you just need to move ONE FINGER not even one cord like the guitar player or the rest of the band, they move many fingers and they all are doing it in order and entire orchestras have 50 musicians and you are all complicated because you just have to move one finger!

This thread (as many others) are on the same path...
 
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