Marty, it was an iBook, and I like it too.
However, to be fair, the Mac laptops are NOT speed demons in OS X. (They're lightening fast in OS 9, but IMO OS 9 should be retired.) An XP Celeron 1 GHz for web browsing and Word (ie. both M$ software) will run circles around a G4 550 TiBook in OS X.1. OS X.1 is beautiful and well designed, but fast it ain't. For games, Macs are a lost cause (but it doesn't really matter on a laptop).
A G3 (aka iBook) is slightly slower, since OS X.1 cannot take advantage of the G4 optimizations, but since the base MHz speed of the CPU is slightly faster, for many things it's on par with the TiBook. The screen may be "only" 12", but given that the 15" screen of the TiBook is only 1152x768, it doesn't offer much real screen real estate advantage over the iBook's superior quality 1024x768 12" (or 14") screen.
Both have POWERED Firewire, USB, VGA out, internal wireless, built-in Ethernet, 56K modem and options for CD-RW/DVD combo drives. I have all of the above in my iBook, with no cards sticking out the sides or dongles, and it's less than 5 lbs. I am currently sitting on my couch and wirelessly AnandTeching to you. I say powered Firewire, because most PC laptops with built-in Firewire, and all PC laptops with PCMCIA Firewire have non-powered Firewire. IMO non-powered Firewire defeats the point of Firewire, since many portable Firewire devices require power from the port just to run.
The TiBook does offer more VGA out resolutions. The iBook is limited to only 1024x768 or lower out the VGA port. That's irrelevant for most people though, since for presentations, it's rare to have an LCD projector higher than 1024x768 native, and for desktop CRT work people just use their desktop computer.
iTunes is the best MP3 management software ever created, and it's free. iPhoto is OK but buggy - not in the same class as iTunes though. Office X is gorgeous, but one annoying thing is that it is limited to 31 char filenames. It will read long filenames fine, and you can save to the same file fine, but any new filename cannot exceed the 31 char limit. Dave works fine, if you use the latest version. However, if you don't want to pay for Dave, OS X has built-in SMB support. It works fine too, but slower transfers over the network. I use SMB over wireless to save files to my PC desktop. I have a USB zip drive, and all of the zip disks for the Mac I use are PC formatted so that I can use them on my PCs too. I also have a Firewire compact flash reader shared between my PC and iBook. I have a Firewire hard drive, but I only use that on my PC. OS X and OS 9 are supposed to read FAT32 fine, but I've found OS X support of FAT32 less than perfect. ie. For my Firewire hard drive either I use NTFS for XP alone, FAT32 for OS 9 and Windows, or HFS+ for Mac alone. Since the drive is large anyway, I just leave it on my desk and formatted for the PC. If I want to connect to it from my iBook I do it over the network instead. If I got a portable firewire hard drive, I'd format it HFS+ and get MacDrive for the PC. Neither the Firewire drive nor the Lexar flash reader require drivers in either OS X or XP.
Photoshop 7 is running on my iBook. Gorgeous. Mine's beta. The release is next month. Illustrator is also gorgeous, but I don't use it. Both my Epson 1640SU Photo scanner and my Samsung ML-4600 laser printer have OS X drivers. The Epson OS X drivers are slow beta ones, but the OS 9 Classic drivers run great under OS X. The Samsung drivers are excellent in OS X. I have run Virtual PC 5 with Windows 2000. My software runs but is slow (obviously). It would be better on a G4, but it would still be slow. (I have 640 RAM.)
Overall, I think the bang for the buck right now is the iBook. The TiBook has some advantages, but for what you've said you need to do, the TiBook's extra is not justified at all. And, you'd be hard-pressed to find a similarly spec'd PC laptop in the same price range and weight. But like I said, superfast it ain't. In OS X I'd put it on par for every day type stuff with a Celly 500 or something in Win XP, but part of that reason is because the OS X GUI is pretty heavy duty. Nicer than any other OS ever created. It makes XP look primitive.
As for the Dells, I'd have to humbly disagree. I have some experience with Dells having owned the OEM version of the Dell Inspiron 5000e, and having used several Dell Inspiron 8100 machines. These machines are aimed for the home market for a reason. The build quality is mediocre and the ergonomics are not impressive. Plus, the feature rich models (like the 8100) weigh a ton. I still have problems configuring some of my colleagues 8100s for Powerpoint presentations - definitely not user friendly. In fact, once I had to pull out my zip drive, copy over his presentation, and finally just install it on my iBook so we could present it. And of course, the Firewire port of the 8100 is non-powered. What the hell are they thinking???
Get the iBook! 12" specifically. Seriously (unless you have bad eyes). $1500 for:
12.1-inch TFT XGA display
600MHz PowerPC G3
128MB SDRAM memory
20GB Ultra ATA drive
CD-RW
and DVD.
Powered Firewire
USB x 2
Modem
10/100 Ethernet
AirPort ready
VGA port
Stereo port
Composite out (with optional cable)
Up to 5 hr. battery life
Only 4.9 pounds
Free iDisk for internet file storage
Free Email account (which works with the built-in Mail app)
OS 9.2
OS X.1
iTunes
iPhoto
Built-in .pdf support for all apps.
iMovie
Internet Explorer 5
Image Capture
Disk burning software
StuffIt Lite (like Winzip)
And oh yeah, I forgot. All of this gorgeous OS X stuff runs on Unix.
Facebook
Twitter