Yet another PB vs. ibook thread

[pghas]

Well, my first computers 20 years ago were macs, and I loved them all. Then my spouse was and is a Windows person so I've been on the dark side. Time to come back. I've been looking at these forums for weeks and have seen most of the threads on this, but wanted people's thoughts:

I'm buying a laptop to use wirelessly in my house to surf the web, write documents, and other basic stuff. However, I'm also in a band and plan to use GarageBand alot, so planned to upgrade my ibook's RAM to at least 512 and HD to 60GB. Then I realized that despite having a DVD burner on my Windows desktop, and a whole slew of home movies on DV, I have no DVD movie burning software, which would cost around $100-$150. So now I've decided I need a Superdriive, which puts me at getting a 14" ibook with upgreaded RAM for roughly $1575.

To me, it makes sense - especially with 10% discounts likely tomorrow - to just make the jump to a 12" PB. Updated recently, a little faster, bigger HD, better graphics card. Does this make sense to other people, because I've now gone from a $1200 purchase to a $1700 (before discount) purchase and am hoping someone can help rationalize my indulgence.

Thanks!

 

[dotdotdot]

PowerBook.

Although the iBook is due for an update, the 1.5 GHz 12" PowerBook will be able to handle your more instensive work in GarageBand. Plus, you need to only buy a 1 GB stick of RAM for about $120 on, say, crucial.com versus an almost $80 upgrade from Apple for just 512 MB RAM.

And with the new TrackPad, it will be easier to cycle through your added tracks, etc.

Plus, with the 12", you can connect it to a monitor like the 23" ACD HD in DVI with 64 MB RAM.

Also, with discounts, you may want the 15"...

 

[pghas]

Thanks for the response. I'll never get away with plunking down 2 grand for a laptop that I don't absolutely, critically need, so I think the 15" is probably out for me. But it wasn't something I'd even considered until now. Thnks again.

 

[weg]

Although the iBook is due for an update, the 1.5 GHz 12" PowerBook will be able to handle your more instensive work in GarageBand. Plus, you need to only buy a 1 GB stick of RAM for about $120 on, say, crucial.com versus an almost $80 upgrade from Apple for just 512 MB RAM.

The 12" Powerbook comes with 256MB RAM built in and a 256MB SO-DIMM that is installed in the extension slot. So, if you buy 1GB from Crucial, you will have to throw away the 256MB SO-DIMM that you bought from Apple. Thank you Apple.