PC univ student eyeing the iBook g4

Hey everybody,

I just found out Apple refreshed their already great G4 iBooks with some extras (bit more speed, airport extreme etc) and I think this might be the notebook for me. But I just have some last minute concerns before taking the plunge.

1. I'll mainly be using it for word processing (no gaming here, unless you cound Yahoo Pool once in awhile lol)for essays and presentations for class. With the 12 inch screens, will I be constantly scrolling sideways to follow what I'm typing? I suppose I can always minimize the window and font but my eyes are none too good as it is. In that case, is the 14 inch any better?

2. I'm not well versed in comp technology but this wireless connectivity sounds cool. In my house we have Rogers cable internet with three PC computers hooked up. If I'm positioned near the router or modem, will my iBook pick up the connection? If it does, do I pay for using it? Sorry if it's a dumb question but it would be too cool if that is how it works.

3. Does it come with or run Adobe Reader and Microsoft Word? Those are the main two windows programs that I use daily.

4. Since I'll only use it for iTunes, some DVD playing, writing documents and surfing the internet, do I really need to max out the RAM at 1.25 GB and upgrade to 80GB hard drive to make it through 3 more years of university? I'd like it to last that long and if these upgrades will help, I'll do it.

Or should I wait it out since it seems everyone is talking about the next generation of G5's already. I dont think I'll need that much speed but I intend on keeping it for 3-4 years so I dont want to be outdated in less than a year. Plus, after a couple years, the iBook might decide it's getting old and slow down. Does extra RAM and HD counter this? I read the OS X uses a lot of RAM. In the PC world, you have to upgrade every few years, I wonder if it's true for Mac users as well.

Other than that, I think the iBook is perfect for playing the occasional DVD, battery life is ample (3.5-4 hrs), small and light (backpack full as it is) and I'm not freaking out over the one buttom trackpad.

But can you tell me if it really is?

 

Hey, there. I'm a "PC univ student", too, and I've been looking at the iBook, as well. I'd be happy to answer your questions.

1) SCREEN SIZE - Whether you have to scroll sideways to see your text doesn't depend on the physical size of your screen. It depends on the pixel resolution . In the iBook's case, it's a standard XGA 1024x768. If you use PCs at home, you're already running at least one of your monitors at this setting. I used a 16'' [viewable] CRT monitor on my Win2K Pentium at the same resolution. You'll be fine!

2) WIRELESS NETWORKING - So! You have cable broadband! *envy* I'm guessing that your Windows PCs are hooked up to your cable modem thru a regular router, which only transmits from its physical ports. In order for your iBook's wireless connectivity to work, you'll need a *wireless* router, which can send the signals to your iBook's AirPort card antennae. Kinda like radio--what're you listening to if there's no station broadcasting? And no, you don't need to pay for any service to tap into your own wireless network. But you might want to invest in an Airport Express, plug that into your existing router, and voila, wireless networking! The Airport Express is very portable, it's about the size of you iBook's power brick. You could take it anywhere to add wireless to a live ethernet port.

3) ACROBAT READER & MS WORD - HAHAHAHAH! You're gonna love this! You know the kind of slow-up you get in Windows when you try to open a PDF file and Acrobat Reader starts? The long loading times? The sluggish response? Well, those days are OVER! Because the Quartz graphics engine for OS X's graphical interface has BUILT-IN PDF-decoding. PDF-viewing is already there! No need to install Acrobat Reader or download all its stupid updates! Moving on--iBook comes preloaded w/ the AppleWorks Office Suite. If you remember using PowerMacs in grade school, ClarisWorks? AppleWorks is the heir thereof. It's also compatible with all MS Office file formats. MS Word essays, Excel spreadsheets, they're all available to you, so you can still take your files onto your school's computers. If you want something more robust, I recommend downloading OpenOffice.org, the opensource office suite. It's based on Sun's StarOffice clone of MS Office. It's available for Windows, Unix, Linux. B/c OS X has native Linux/Unix X11 emulation, you can run the Linux vers of OpenOffice. A native version of OpenOffice for OS X's Aqua interface is forthcoming in 2005 or 2006, most likely 2006. AppleWorks is a much simpler, more straightforward office suite, w/ respect to feaures. OpenOffice is highly customizeable, w/ it's toolbars, buttons, options, etc.

4) MEMORY AND HARD DRIVE - It seems you'll be doing the same things I want to do--music, movies, schoolwork. I don't think you need to max out w/ the 1 GB RAM upgrade. But I do recommend you get the 512 MB extra, for a 768 MB total. In all the relevant iBook discussions, there is a consensus that there is a much-appreciated speed-up to launching programs w/ the extra 512 MB. You should run office suites, multimedia, w/ plenty to spare. For hard drive, you say you'll mostly be storing music and schoolwork, right? Then 80 GB is plenty to last you thru college, and then some. What really eats up hard drive space is video, so if you like to download TV show episodes, whatnot, you'll eventually have to start regulating HD space. But that's what your Combo Drive is for! Backup those videos onto CD-R, or buy a plug-n-play USB 2.0 external hard drive. From the right online retailer, like Newegg.com, you can get a 250 GB external HDD for less than $1/GB. Then you can devote drive-space hogging files to an external drive, and keep music files handy on your iBook.

I think the fear of being outdated is a fear any computer shopper has to face. The lucky thing is, w/ Apple, these machines tend to last forever. I have a friend about to switch off his 1998 black G3 PowerBook. And another is using an early generation G3 iBook w/ OS X that survived at tumble down a flight of stairs and hot chocolate spill. They all do what they do w/ no problem. Music, internet, schoolwork. I know...you're afraid w/ Apple releasing a new ver. of OS X EVERY YEAR, your system will become bogged down w/ bloat. Here's the irony that hit me when researching my own Switch. Unlike Windows, which gets slower on the same hardware w/ each year, OS X got faster. I remember reading the benchmarks for OS X 10.3 Panther versus 10.2 Jaguar. iTunes music encoding times, Photoshop image rendering times, actually SHORTENED. This is b/c OS X's core is built on FreeBSD Unix, an already highly efficient system. With each revision, like last year's Panther, they went in and streamlined the coding even more, made it more efficient. That's b/c the groundwork is so well-laid for the programmers.

The only slow-down concern you should have is w/ regard to OS X's highly advanced graphical engine. W/ this year's imminent 10.4 Tiger release, there is a new component to the graphics engine called "Core Image", which uses hardware acceleration for all kinds of cool visual effects. While this is mostly a feature for professional digital artists, it also affects the numerous animations in normal OS X onscreen objects and events. The current iBook G4 graphics card, the Radeon Mobility 9000, isn't supported by "Core Image". There are two ways Apple could deal w/ this-- (a) announce a newer graphics card for the iBook at the MacWorld San Francisco conference coming in a few weeks in January or (b) keep it the same. Now, obviously we want them to give us a better video card! But Apple is notorious for giving us more software than hardware. More likely than not, the iBook video card will stay the same until the next speed bump, a few months from now. If that happens, though, and you want to buy right NOW NOW NOW DAMMIT WANT IT NOW, there's no need to worry your iBook won't handle Core Image. Core Image is designed to scale to the capabilities of its graphics chip. It won't ask for more than you have. Think of it this way--the original G3 iBooks were released w/ ATi Rage Mobility graphics w/ 16 MB video RAM. Then OS X was released w/ "recommended" system specs of 32 MB of video RAM. Still, my friend's G3 iBook runs perfectly fine.

Oh1 Yeah, and you also wanted to know about G5 making G4 obsolete. No, I don't think the G5 will make it anytime soon into the Apple laptops, nor does any informed analysis I've encountered. Why? IBM's PowerPC 970 chip runs too hot. They bent over backwards to manage cooling the iMac G5 slab, which is twice as thick as your iBook and much bigger. If they ever to bring G5 to laptops, it will be in the PowerBook AT LEAST a generation or two before iBook gets it. My prediction? The G4 will remain Apple's laptop CPU of choice for some time to come. Freescale, the company that makes the G4 chip, (they split off from Motorola) has multi-core G4 chip designs for the coming years, which are very power-efficient and extraordinarily powerful. They're basically fitting multiple chip cores into a single chip. The G5 is overt, brute power, but the G4 is deceptively powerful. They can keep the clock speed low to curtail power consumption, but multiple cores to increase performance. This way, Apple won't have to devote massive research effort toward trying to cool a superhot chip inside a super-slim case and being forced to compromise between performance and battery life. In all likelihood, the G4 will not soon disappear from Apple's radar screen for some years to come.

I hope all this has been helpful to you! I've tried giving you all the information you need before someone comes along and turns this into a topic toward debate or comparison. My personal opinion? You've got years of college ahead of you, wait a few months, see how Apple refreshes their product line. W/ OS X 10.4 Panther coming at MacWorld San Francisco, along w/ a bevy of other things (like this slim, cheap desktop box all the sites are buzzing about), there might be some significant changes across the product lines, esp. for processors. Good luck w/ college and enjoy your soon-to-be new iBook!

"All good things to those who wait, Clarice!" -Silence of the Lambs

 

and there is a mac version of MS Word, and Apple should be introducing their own version of typing programs presentations etc. soon.

 

you will be upset for taking apple...so sorry for this...how do u think that u combine all applications in apple powerbook?for just a physichologic manners u wanna go apple? do not leave PC? dont u play a game? such as, Medal Of Honour asific Assault? Doom 3?

Love of the dead does not last,
because the dead will not return.
But love of the living
is in every moment fresher than a bud,
both the inward and the outward eye.
Choose the love of that Living One
who is everlasting, who offers you
the wine that increases life.
Do not say "We have no entrance to that King."
Dealings with the generous are not difficult
Mevlana Celaleddin Rumi (1207-1273)

 

Wow, what great replies. Thanks, it just nailed my own conviction. iBook it is lol. Hope you guys make the right choice as well.

 

I don't play any games at all. I have a PC desktop with lots of power for movie watching but my laptop is going to be for school essays and projects. I just want a good laptop that won't catch any viruses and Windows isn't looking so reliable to me as it used to. My new desktop is already full of spybots and viruses.

 

Also, if you're gonna buy an iBook really REALLY soon, you should wait at least until the 22nd of Jan, when the new iLife and iWork suites begin shipping standard w/ all Apple computers. iLife is largely irrelevant, but iWork has Keynote and more importantly--Pages, the new word processor that's replacing the ancient AppleWorks suite. It's very powerful, highly customizeable, and has great drag-n-drop integration.

I have another year before I start classes again so I'm gonna hold out for Tiger and whatever i/PBook revisions come down the line.