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Which is a better buy?

If all you where given to spend is $1,300 what would you buy?

  • Dell Inspiration 2500 900MHz Celeron... $1,299

    Votes: 2 9.5%

  • Apple iBook 500MHz G3... $1,199

    Votes: 19 90.5%
  • Total voters
    21
DakotaGuy

DakotaGuy

macrumors 601
Original poster
Jan 14, 2002
4,339
4,083
South Dakota, USA
Since I have came to determine that MOST...not all, but MOST people on there forums do not like the iBook, I was wondering what you would think would be a better buy if you were on a budget...I know most of you have a lot of money or that companies buy your computers, but there are a few people like me out there that has to fork up every last penney to buy a computer and over the years I have chosen Apple. No I am not poor...but I also like to put money into my other hobbies like snowmobiles and ATV's so I have to make cuts somewhere along the line, so that is why I have made the choice of an iMac and an iBook even though I get mocked by people on here because their machines are so much better then mine. So I put you in a persons shoes that does not have an unlimited cash flow and ask this question. If you were handed $1,300 dollars and not one more cent and you had to buy a laptop what would be your best choice?

A Dell Inspiration 2500 900MHz Celeron at $1,299

or

An Apple iBook 500 MHz G3 12.1" at $1,199

Most people on here say that the G3 processor is junk so therefore I would think the Dell is probably faster. I don't know which one is better designed though.
 
Booker

I would go with booker. Remember this? "MHz Myth" WHy the hell would you want a Dell? I mean, they are ugly, shi^^y OS, crapy hardware and software. I mean, I dont get it.
 
The G3 is not junk...

...it just can't beat a G4. The Celeron however, is junk. It's an underclocked, undercached, crappyified Pentium 3. The iBook would crush it. Also, you might want to check the name there. I don't think it's Inspiration.

The iBook is a fine machine, it's just that most of the people on the forum aren't "consumers", so they tend to prefer the powermac/powerbook. The iBook will almost definetely be better engineered, it's the feature set that's in question. I'm not quite sure what that Dell has (aside from a really ****ty processor).
 
Felix....

Yea buddy, I am with you. The iBook is a way better buy for the money. It comes with all the great software to do anything you ever wanted to do. If you got the Dell, you would have like 40 different companies crap. I could probly write a new music program for PeeCee and it would be standard on all new shizzy Dells under 2000 dollars.
 
Make it better

Get the 1299 ibook with the EDU discount. It is now 1240. Upgrade the drive to a 20 gig, or add more ram, and youve got an unstoppable Booker;)
 
my thoughts...

I think u picked the wrong place to ask for an objective opinion between buying either Mac or PC...

Even though I'm biased, I still think the iBook would be the better option. I feel in the long run, u will be much happier with the Mac OS than having to deal with Windoze....especially if u are already a Mac user....
 
Re: The G3 is not junk...

Originally posted by Catfish_Man
...it just can't beat a G4. The Celeron however, is junk. It's an underclocked, undercached, crappyified Pentium 3. The iBook would crush it. Also, you might want to check the name there. I don't think it's Inspiration.

The iBook is a fine machine, it's just that most of the people on the forum aren't "consumers", so they tend to prefer the powermac/powerbook. The iBook will almost definetely be better engineered, it's the feature set that's in question. I'm not quite sure what that Dell has (aside from a really ****ty processor).
Click to expand...

Is there a board then for people like me who are consumers and are not just in the game for "keeping up with the Jones'?" I found this place a couple of months ago and I sorta took a liking to it cause people seemed helpful and nice unlike other message boards, but it seems that most people on here discredit you if you are not a professional or at least own what they consider a "professional machine". Well I am a teacher and I teach computers in my classroom. Well I hate to say I teach computers...I integrate computers into my curriculum. In fact what is the shame is that our school has thrown Apples out for Gateways. The reason is because the Gateways are what the parents wanted because according to them the Macs are not what the kids will be using when they grow up...so why even bother teaching with them? I still have a few old Macs in the room and use them a lot. Heck I even take my "non professional" iBook in all the time and use it to teach lessons by using the AppleWorks presentation and hooking it up to a 27" TV. Nothing I use is considered professional...yet I think teaching is a profession.

I did the poll to put you guys into a situation like mine...a "consumer" situation if you will. My school made the decision to go with the iBooks for our roving lab and as I was happy with it the parents were furious. In fact the next cycle they will be replaced with PC notebooks. It is above and beyond me to stop it. I would love to find a mac friendly school, but SD is slowly converting all the schools over and I don't really feel like leaving here right now.

Anyhow I think I will hang around...I have learned a lot from you guys...I know I cannot compete with you when it comes to having the biggest and the best...but I will still throw my two cents in even if it is discredited being from a consumers point of view. I think this poll however is the idea behind what Apple needs to do to gain market share...focus on the consumers...not just the professionals.

As far as the G3 is concerned we all know it is not better then the G4...but what is it better then??? A Celeron, a Pentium II, III, IV...AMD? Where does it fall in compared to all the processors for laptops and desktops? I know right now that Apple could be clocking the G3 at 1 Ghz in the iBook if they wanted and I would like to see how a 1 GHz G3 would compare to the PC chips.
 
The best deal would be this Dell, ( http://www.dell.com/us/en/dhs/offers/specials_3x_special62.htm ).
It is a 1ghzPiii-m 256mb 20gb 14.1 SXGA+ 32MBGeforce2
It also includes "With purchase of ANY new Dell Home System Dimension desktop or Inspiron notebook (shipping extra) by Feb 7th 11PM CT."

The price is $1459 - $100 rebate for ordering online.

I am sorry, it is just dell has the best deal for a laptop in this price range.
 
It all depends -

- on what you'd use the computer for.

I use a Ti 550 most of the time but I also had an iBook and I loved it. I'd have both if I could and I'll probably go back to that.

Having bought 4 PowerBooks and 2 iBooks in the past 18 months I've had very very few problems with them. 1 PB had a noisy HD on delivery, I got it back in 3 days!!! Yes, 3!

What kind of service can you expect from Dell? What will the resale on a Dell PC be?

For me, with $1300, I'd look for an iBook 600 with DVD on eBay. The Apple warranty transfers with the iBook so it's a safe buy. You might even find it for under $1200 - but not if I find it first
 
Parents furious??? Why???

Hey Abercrombieboy

- why were the parents in SD "furious" are you sure they don't work for Dell. I think Dell is pressuring schools not to have any OS's 'cept MS' in their labs as a gesture to "The Beast".

BTW- I got ALOT of work done on my iBook and in some cases I prefer carrying around the iBook to carrying around my TiBook.

The TiBook may impress people/clients but I feel more comfortable with a $1000 computer out and about that with a $2500 computer that everyone notices and I have to keep a sharp eye on.
 
As a filmmaker, my main machine is a G4 933 mHz tower (which I had to go into debt to afford), but I can definitely tell you that the G3 is certainly no piece of junk. Anyone who says that has no idea what the hell s/he is talking about! (And, to be fair, I've never actually come across anyone at macrumors who stated that the G3 is a piece of junk.)

The G3 is still one zippy processor, no doubt about it. And I can tell you from experience that it blows a 1 gHz Pentium away.

I use my second machine - an imac DVSE 500 mHz (G3, obviously) - and there's nothing wrong with this machine. In fact, I have it rendering video constantly, which it does slower than the G4 tower, yes, but there's a very pragmatic reason as to why I press it into this service. BECAUSE IT'S VIRTUALLY SILENT!

Believe me, there is no way I could ever get any sleep listening to the jet engine noise of the G4 crunching numbers all night long. And I tell you something else: there is not one thing you can do on a fully loaded G4 tower tower that you can't do on a G3 500 (except maybe watch fullscreen divx video, but that's also problematic on a G4 tower). Will some tasks take a bit longer on the G3? Yes, but unless you have a dire, pressing need to conserve as many seconds as you can whilst creating Photoshop renders and the like (and this only becomes a necessity when you are relying on this for a living), an ibook or imac G3 is more than adequate.

And if you take away the Altivec, the G3 and the G4 aren't all that much different in the speed category. (Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but that is my experience.)

What exactly are you planning to use your machine for? I run some of the most processor intensive apps around on the "lowly" imac - Final Cut Pro 3, Adobe After Effects 5.5, Photoshop 6, Logic Audio Platinum, et al., so I defy anyone to tell me that the G3 is a piece of junk!
 
My basis for comparison is purely subjective, but comes with extensive experience at university and commercial video labs:

A 500 mHz G3 beats the hell out of a 1 - 1.2 gHz Pentium III easily.

I'm talking about real world usage and tasks. That's what is important, and not some benchmark numbers on a bar graph.
 
abercrombie boy...

i think in your case the apple ibook made perfect sense...it is a consumer laptop, you're a consumer...in the case of the Ti book, you're right, most of the people on here (like myself) use their macs professionally and therefore always want the latest-greatest...

hell, my last professional mac before i bought a 533 desktop and a Ti 500 was a *professional* G3 400 black powerbook, so you will never hear from me that a G3 600 is a piece of junk...

but if you're going to spend 7 hours a day in final cut (which that guy said he was NOT going to do) then i would recommend the g4.
 
Thanks guys...I guess I just wanted some reassurance what I bought is a good computer. I still love my iMac DV 400, but my iBook will walk over it especially in OSX...I am guessing that the main reason is the processor speed and the additional RAM. The part about the parents in our school district...they have just been conditioned by Bill Gates and the rest of the PeeCee would to think that teaching kids skills on a Mac is useless because the kids will never use them once they leave HS. Actually the kids like the Macs better but their parents don't. Plus almost all my kids that have a computer at home use a PC because that is what the parents use. It is a shame that Apple is loosing ground in the education market. B

Believe me...if the teachers had our way we would be using nothing but Macs, but the State, Board of Education, and Administration wants everything to be slowely converted to PC because they feel it is superior for teaching real world skills. I think that the new iMac is great and so are the iBooks and even the CRT iMac. Sure most professionals might not care for them...but they are the computers that schools, parents, etc. will be buying and those are places you have to get to get marketshare. Well when it comes time to change out those awesome little iBooks for the hunk a junk Gateway Solo's I will bring up the points...but I am sure they will fall on dead ears. Heck even my principal laughs at me because I like Macs...but his Gateway breaks down all the time...he says...oh that is just a normal thing...but it is still a great computer.........
 
"real world"

It's interesting that your school district is converting to M$ because it offers more "real world" experiences. While I would certainly agree that the market still belongs to M$, I'm beginning to think that the 5% market share often quoted for Apple machines is quite a bit lower than reality. Perhaps it's just the circles I travel in, but I'd say that more like 12%-15% of "professionals" are using Macs today. Or, perhaps, it's because most people who have a need for specialized software above and beyond basic wordprocessing and email find that software on the Mac platform. This is mostly creative professionals, but also scientists, mathematicians, attorneys, and educators, in my experience. So it's strange that parents, etc would want to go with PC's, when Macs can do everything PC's can, and so much more.

BTW, I haven't been here long either, but I wouldn't agree that people here look down upon consumers or consumer machines... just look at the "Waiting for my iMac"-ish threads!

Just my $.02!
 
I have both (almost)

I like the inspiron (I have a 900MHX PIII) and the drive swapping is nice and the screen has better resolution (1400x???).

BUT

I would get the IBook

Much better design - I loved it! (just donated it to a group as I got the Ti667) It was FAST (the CELERON SUX I agree w/ the other posts) will wipe the floor with the Dell and it is easier to use, manage and the SW is better.

Get the IBook.
 
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