I live in China / HK and have access to countless PC parts that are extremely cheap here...

I want to get a lightweight laptop that is as small as possible, and runs OSX.
It will be used as my work computer as I travel alot...and it will need to be able to run Entourage and M$ Office, and I seldom use Photoshop / Illustrator for very simple editing.

Normally email does not require great power, however I get 200 emails a day, and store about 20K emails on my laptop. My current 15" pwerbook G4 even gets bogged down by it.


SO......I was wondering if I should build a PC laptop that can run OSX.....BUT, i need it to be very stable and reliable. I do not need any other OS to run.


Can someone recommend all the parts to get that will work together and be able to do the above mentioned? I am sorry, but know very little about building PC's. Normall I just buy a mac...but the 13" Macbook hardly seems justifiable at 2" smaller, and $1200 price tag.

If you only use MS Entourage (MS Outlook in Windows world) and MS Office why not simply install some Windows and run from that. Especially if you're into a cheap generic PC.

Is all the hassle involved worthwhile for just those 2 Apps (which are probably better under Windows anyway)?

Good point.

hecker

well....the windows version sucks butt....

outlook is crap compared to Entourage, as Entourage has built in project management which is really big for me.

I was looking at some really small prebuilt laptops today...found a really nice lookin 13" fujitsu that has a DVD-RW that pops in and out ... price was HKD $8980. But yeah...i have no clue what the best option is for a cheap and small laptop that can run Mac....

not to mention i already made a ton of applescripts to automate my categorizing of emails and files ... i dont know how to convert those applescripts into windows scripts (if its even possible)

I think that the slowness of your powerbook for 20,000 emails is probably more likely drive related than CPU related. Try opening the CPU History window in Activity Monitor the next time you do whatever it is that slows it down. If it shows the CPU isn't fully loaded, you might be able to just buy a faster HD (Apple used either a 4200 RPM or 5400 RPM drive depending on when you got it. 7200 RPM drives are available).

but i also want something smaller than the 15" powerbook, and find the macbook to be quite expensive

was thinking building a custom PC notebook might be cheaper