"Switch" dilema

[jeakers]

Hi,

I am in Seminary fulltime and want to switch to an ibook.

Here's my question. I am being offered the following for $500.

Almost never used.

ibook 500 Mhz
66 Mhz bus
128 mb RAM
Combo Drive
Apple pro mouse
Office 2001

I can get Jaguar for free as my wife is a teacher.

or

the 700 Mhz base
100 mhz bus
CDROM
Office X


$999 - $50 educational discount
$199 - Office X
plus 7 % tax
Total $1228

It will be used exclusively for school work.

What are your recommendations? Thanks ahead for your input.

John

 

[Mr. Anderson]

ah, that's a tough one. Does the extra power actually outweigh the more than double the cost? It all depends on what your course work requires. The newer machine will run much better on OSX than the older one. Are you going to be using iMovie or any graphics programs? And how much of an issue is the money?

D

 

[weez75]

In my opinion...

The offer you're being given in regards to the $500 iBook is excellent. That's a great price for that piece of equipment. However, to run Jaguar you're going to want 256 MB or RAM minimum. You'll probably spend $100 on that by the time you pay someone to install it. It's easy enough to do on your own but be aware you need to upgrade the RAM.

Also, you should know that Office 2001 will run in Classic mode which isn't the speediest of things to do.

 

[jeakers]

I won't be using any video programs at all. I am concerned that I'm buying 2-3 generation old equipment.

I will be using Office X. Will the 66mhz bus be tremendously slower than the 100 mhz.

I am currwntly using 1 P4 1.4 Ghz laptop. Will the 500 mhz be horribly slow compared to it? What about the 700 or 800 Mhz?

 

[Ambrose Chapel]

vid card

Just to elaborate on what dukestreet said about the newer models running OS X better - one thing to keep in mind if you will be running Jaguar is that the video card of the 500 MHz iBook does not support Quartz Exrtreme, whereas the card in the newer models (700/800) will. Being able to take advantage of QE will make your OS X experience better. That and the faster bus speed may be enough to outweigh the low price of the older model.

 

[gopher]

Quartz Extreme is supported on some 500 Mhz models...if it has 16MB of VRAM it is supported. And even if it isn't 10.2 offers a modest improvement in speed regardless of whether or not Quartz Extreme is there:

read the bottom of http://www.apple.com/macosx/jaguar/quartzextreme.html

and see that you get about half of Quartz Extreme's optimization
just from upgrading to 10.2.

 

[crassusad44]

Tough decision... But it all boils down to how much money you're willing to spend. If you have the money for the new model, I'd go for it. But do spend some extra cash on more memory (pump in 256 MB more). It's a big difference in speed from the 500 to 700 MHz model, not just because of QE, but also the new Sahara chip inside...