New Laptop: ibook G4 or Inspiron 9XXX

[Rookie]

I'm looking at buying a new laptop since my Inspiron 8100 is getting dated.

I love the power and all the Inspiron line has to offer. But the GF has a Powerbook and I can't help but be intrigued by Darwin and all OS X has to offer.

What do you guys think? Again I know it is apples and oranges but owners sound off!

 

[trikster2]

suggest you look at the apples first before making your decision.

I too was interested in trying out OSX. AFter playing with the apple power books for several hours I came to conclusion that OSX is great, but I did not walk out with an apple laptop because...

Over all the powerbook/ibook screens were a step below my Dell D800's. They all seemed faint/dim and The only one I found acceptable was the 17" powerbooks

But that is a $2500 laptop .... decided to wait a bit and see if anything new comes out on the PBs with better screens

Meanwhile dell has come out with the Dell Inspiron 9200. A thin and light 17". Not quite as light as the 17" PB (6.9lb) but at 7.7lbs its a lot closer than most other 17" laptops

Unfortunately the Dell 9200 now has a ship date of Dec 7, so no matter what I am waiting for a bit.....

 

[cheesehead]

I would get a 9100 instead, but that's just me. I now have one (1250$ for a maxed-out model-WOOHOO!) and am remarkably pleased with it, considering the fact that I hate dell in general. However, the 9100 is more or less discontinued, so you're left with the 9200. With a puny XGA LCD and 256mb of RAM stock, it's lacking in features, and to get it up to "useful" level (I.e. 512mb RAM, WXGA LCD) would be another 200$. Add to this the cost of a Wi-Fi card and other random goodies, and you're set back about two grand.
I have ownedd a mac laptop, an 800mhz/G3 ibook, and was extremely happy with it. Between the convienience and immunity to spyware, it was heaven on earth compared to Windows ME, which I was stuck using at school. After a 512mb RAM upgrade (640mb total), I never had it crash, either.
However, my Ibook suffered a motherboard faliure, and needed multiple LCD replacements. Apple's motherboards are famous for crapping out mysteriously, with them making you wait three months before a program to fix them goes into effect. On the other hand, if you're not moving this around much, the 17" PB might be the way to go-AppleCare will get it fixed in three days or less, providing you have'nt damaged it. AppleCare is a necessity, however, so tack another 300$ on to the base price. OSX is very different from windows, too; I completely adore it's rock-solidness and nifty Aqua functions, others hate it.
If you REALLY need a 17" LCD laptop, look at Ibuypowe or ABSr. They sell AMD64 based lappys that are more powerful than the 9200 for about the same cost, and you can get more options on them. The tech support is abysmal at Ibuypower, but ABS is more expensive; it's your choice.

PLUG: See my F/S forum for a copy of Microsoft Office for OSX. Trust me, you'll be wanting it, and my copy is still in the original case, complete with manual.

Hope you're happy with whatever you try,
Cheesehead.

 

[Kermy]

As a disclaimer:

Proud ex-owner of an iBook G4 and a 12" Powerbook. All purchased and sold this year. Currently own an iMac G5.

The screens on the Powerbook, especially the 12" SUCKS. It's dim and has horrible viewing angles. And the performance of the iBook G4 would be WAYYYYY slower than the 9XXX. Couple of reasons: slllooowww hd (4200 RPM, and you can't up it via Apple), OSX sucks up a lot of ram, 512mb is bare minimum to multitask, vid card isn't compatible with Apple Tiger's Coreimage/Core Video feature. Why buy a laptop which won't be able to use all the features of the new update coming in a few months?

 

[trikster2]

Gosh comparing a 9100 to a powerbook just makes me shudder. I helped a friend out with her 9100 this weekend and the thing is an abismal looking tank. I think the AC adapter alone weighs more than a 12" power book!

Cheesehead, can you explain why people love that beast so much? It's felt no faster than my D800 (centrino 1.7 meg) for day to day stuff.

Combine a 17" screen with a desktop chip like the sagers and you are getting 90 to 120 minutes battery life. PCMAG is claiming nearly 5 hours on the 9200 for battery life.

If the reviews at PC mag are true the 9200 could truly be an exceptional laptop at a great price. $1450 for a 17" centrino laptop with a 1900x1200 screen? I Don't think anything else out there, even the off brands like sager are matching that right now..

 

[cheesehead]

The 9xxx comes with a 4200 RPM drive by default. I love my 9100 because it's so ridiculously cheap, and runs games happily. For 950$, there's no better deal around, and for those of us who actually have some muscle tissue, another few lbs. is no biggie. Battery life is nothing to brag about, but I can get more than two hours out of it with some carefully
I personally liked the ibook's screen. It was farily sharp, and....it worked. I dunno what you're complaining about. The ibook is also farily durable as far as notbooks go, and the construction felt a lot stronger than that of most notebooks-which is none too surprising, considering the thing is almost entirely IBM parts. The HDD was fast enough for a little photoshopping.
I miss my ibook.

 

[Kermy]

Yea the 9XXX might come with a 4200 RPM by default but at least you can upgrade it. You can't do that with the iBook if you buy thru Apple. If you say the screen on the iBook is nice...well you've never seen a nice screen then. Go check out the 17" PB, or the new iMacs or h3ll, check out some of the pc laptop screens like the Sony Xbrite ones. Those things beat the iBook's/12" Pb's screen so badly.

 

[alisajid]

I used to own a G3 iBook and a 15" Powerbook. Just as you said great cool looking OS. But, the screen-res is way too low if you care for that sort of thing (which I did). 1024 ain't cutting it anymore for me.

A Dell bought at an opportune time with the right deal/coupon will be the better buy.

 

[addragyn]

Apple notebooks are known for quality screens. You know the whole content creation industry and all that. Maybe some of you have not adjusted your screens properly. Whether or not they're the "best" is debateable but "crappy" is definitely BS.

SuperCal is a great utility for setting up an LCD on OS X.

If you're shoping a Mac laptop right now Amazon has some super deals. Thread @ Ars.

 

[trikster2]

Apple notebook screens may have been all that a year ago but now they are lagging seriously behind the competion.

1280x860 on a 15" screen is substandard when others are offering 1900x1200. Same for the 1440xwhatever 17" screen when dell is offering 1900x1200 on a laptop that costs nearly 1/2 the price of the apple powerbook. I can't find the actual brightness specs, but to my eyes the ibook screens look much dimmer than my dell C400 (12") or D800 (15").

Also apples quartz or whatever their font rendering is called looks like garbage to me (esp in word) compared to the razor sharp cleartype on XP.

 

[addragyn]

Research has been done that concludes that until we get resolution independent OSes 101dpi is optimal. Which the majorty of screens that people select and buy are right around.

Brightness is adjustable. It's not like we're comparing DSTN to TFT here.

Word on the Mac does a terrible job of rendering for a variety of reasons.
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Word...WontDisplayOrPrint.htm

I'm gonna have to call PEBCAK on the font thing. Countless publications are laid out of Macs. This would not be the case were the font redering as f'ed up as you think it is.

2D on the Mac is done through Quartz. Which is based on PDF. This is a good thing.
http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/quartz/