Powerbook question

Hi, I'm looking for a notebook to replace my 9 pound one. Ive never used a MAC before, always PC. I have a powerful PC at home that does EVERYTHING. I'm going to college next year so I just want a notebook to do email, internet, pdf reading, office, music, pictures, dvd playback...etc. --> pretty simple stuff. No games ( I Can do that at home) That being said, IJ ust need a reliable, ULTRAPORTABLE notebook that I can bring to and from school every day. The 12" powerbookseems really nice, although people from the HARDWARE forum seem to be trying to convince me to go for a fujitsu..I have 2 ipods at home and theyre AMAZING so I know I won't be disappointed..except for potentiasl compatibility issues, anyways, I'd like some feedback on this, also a question:
PC's have those vga connectors (the blue one) --> does the powerbook come with a vga adaptor (i know it has dvi) --> I need this to hook up to projectors for powerpoint presentations.
ANy comments? (Im looking at the 12" with combodrive + 768 mb ram, with studetnt discount runs me at 1800 around (CAD) Thanks!!!!

 

it comes with a mini dvi --> vga connector. as well as the mini dvi --> dvi adapter.

 

Queshy,

I was in roughly the same situation, except weekly travel for work instead of school. My old Dell Inspiron 7000 was getting old and falling apart, and it was stinkin' heavy! I just about went the Fujitsu or IBM T42/43 route. The IBM's are great sight unseen from all reports. The Fujitsu's feel great, though they are noticeably light, and have a tiny bit of flex here and there. I would have paid the $1500 - $2000 for one in a heartbeat, though. My choice came down to whether or not I needed dedicated graphics: No=Fujitsu, Yes=IBM. The 12" PB was a dark horse runner also. I ran across a great deal on an open box 1.33 gHz combo drive powerbook, so I decided to go for it. I couldn't be happier. I switched from macs to pc in 1999, and have become a pretty hardcore pc guy. That has made the switch back very slighty painful as follows:
1) I can't figure out how to tile windows like a pc/windows machine
2) I have some specialized engineering/math software that is pc only and does not support mac.

In truth 99% of my laptop use is digital photography, web and email communication, spreadsheets, pdf and word documents and music. I also just got an ipod, and it is COOL! I sprung for MS office Mac. With office mac and Ilife, the PB does everthing I want with style, comfort and excellent batery life, as well as light weight and built in bluetooth (read 2 button and a click scroll wheel mouse!). For everything else there is an old dell laptop, a newish dell desktop at home and an ancient pc at work. I recommend the powerbook for your needs. I would also recommend the ibook. It is several hundred less, and equally capable. My open box deal beat the ibook price, and I personally like the look of the powerbook enough more to have paid full price for it, but that is strictly vanity, not necessity.

 

Thanks Moto Trojan.
I have some good news for you ... I saw on television the other day in mac osx to change tiles like you described, press F10 or something..one of those, it's called Expose, and it resizes all of them so you can see what's going on. Try it. I really really like the powerbook, but then again I've never used a mac.I knwo I will have to shell out a lot of $$$ for office mac Like I think it's too late to switch platforms, although it isn't really switching ; if it werent for my uber-nerdy desktop at home (p4, 3.2 ht, 250 gb hd, x300 pci express, media centre + I have all the peripherals one would ever need) I would never think of it. I'd see the powerbook as a supplemetn to the windows box.
And yes, the powerbook looks awesome.....another thing is that I have a pocket pc, so that won't sync with the mac, but why owuld I need to do that anyway?
MotoTrojan, give me your msn, you seem to know what you're talking about .

 

Queshy,

Educational Office Mac is $149. The Apple stores seem to take the stance that everyone is a student of life... Expose works great to uncover open windows when you are multitasking. What I whant to do is something that achieves the same result as windows "tile all windows vertically," or "tile all windows horizontally." You get this choice when you right click on the bar down at the bottom of the screen that has all the bulltons on it for the open applications. It is really useful when comparing or copy/pasting between two documents or spreadsheets. It organizes them symetrically and fils the screen. So far, to do the same thing, I have to drag, position and resize the windows on a mac, and one can only resize from the lower right corner of a mac window, rather than any corner as in MS windows. It is a minor pain. I like OSX enough to recommend it. It is different than ms windows. I don't (yet) feel that it is better. Or worse.

What's an msn? I'm not that hip yet...

 

MotoTrojan, Sorry I missed the last part of your post, got it now tho,
MSN as in msn messgener ? You're a Mac guy, so like iChat or somethign for you...lol

 

Queshy,

I've used yahoo messenger in the past. I recently installed their OSX version, but I haven't tried it yet. My screen name(?) is aamefford. Try that out. I haven't hooked up to ichat yet, as it is based on AOL, and I have a BIG problem with all things AOL ever since I had to format and clean install MS windows to get their parasitic software out of my old Dell. I'm also not a big fan of mucho-spam network, I mean msn based on some past hotmail experiences. Let me know if the yahoo messenger thing works for you, or grab my email from my profile.

 

my advise to to is to use skype... i have never try something else tho (like yahoo messenger...) but i'm using skype for a long time and i dont have complain... although if you or someone here interesting about horses horsesring.com this site will be perfect for you...

 

Uh... that post is from THREE YEARS ago

I was wondering why someone was considering a Powerbook...

 

Haha... I was wondering the same thing. I call this "necroposting"...