Help me decide

[andsteele]

Okay, I want to buy a mac. I use a pc at the moment but want a notebook for college. I wanted a macbook pro but the prices are stupidly high. Even second hand ones on ebay. I was thinking of buying a referbished powerbook g4 17" off ebay. According to the reviews, they look brand new. These models would have a 1.67 PowerPC G4 processor, 120gb hard drive and 512mb of ram. I would of course upgrade the ram to 1gb or maybe 2gb. So, should I buy a powerbook right now, or wait ages to save up enough money for a macbook pro? I would be using it for web surfing, web design, photoshop, word processing and watching a few DVD's now and then. I would also install leopard if I knew how well it runs.

 

I was also wondering how the powerbooks handle games for mac. I was planning to run windows on a macbook to play games, but I have a desktop PC so I wouldn't be too bothered if the powerbook handle games.

 

Other info such as battery life and any problems the powerbook has would be appreciated.

[apowerr]

I'd go with a Macbook or save up for the Macbook Pro. You don't want to buy an overpriced computer with legacy hardware that can't even run the lastest iMovie.

[hecker]

I'd go with a Macbook or save up for the Macbook Pro. You don't want to buy an overpriced computer with legacy hardware that can't even run the lastest iMovie.

I agree. PPC has already become obsolete in my view.

 

I think a macbook with 2GB of Ram would be perfect for your needs. I am a professional programmer and I also do a little Photoshopping and Web Designing on the side. I also watch a lot of DVDs and even rip/burn movies, no problem. The only real advantage, in my opinion of the pro version, is the awesome video card. But even with the simple GMA chip I can play games (not Crysis of course) quite well on both OSX and bootcamp (XP). If you want more and can afford it, then you should buy 4GB of Ram instead of 2GB.

 

You won't regret it!

 

hecker

[skyhighmac]

Yeah, I agree with hecker and erei33. If you really want to do gaming on your laptop, get the mbp. The only thing that I dont like is that the fans spin up to 6k and its a little noisy, so desktop gaming is the best. Apple sells refurbished mbp, scoll down on the store home oage and its on the left side. i bought my macbook refurbished and I haven't had any problems, and I saved $300.

Battery life on my macbook is about 2 hours at full brightness (surfing the web), and about 5 hours watching movies on really low brightness. (DVD's copied to your hd could make that longer, hd uses less power than optical drive.)

Hope all this helped!

[(MoC)]

Yeah, I'd recommend the macbook pro as well. It will be a good investment or if you might not need a laptop in the end (I read his post; just thinking) get a G5 off of ebay (It beats any macbook I know!!)!!

[FUKKU]

Buy the regular macbook, use the savings to upgrade your desktop PC for gaming. The regular macbook is perfectly fine for web design/photoshop work.

[A Nonny Moose]

Get the MacBook not pro if you're a casual gamer.

[Urbz]

I totally LOVE my Powerbook, but I'm looking at upgrading it. PPC will still be supported for a while, but support and 'like-new' are two very different ideas.

Although going with the Powerbook would save you some green, you would need a new machine relatively soon... if not because of necessity (which honestly, I do not think would be a problem) but because of raw speed. Sure, my laptop can handle most of the things I want it to do, but when I think of how much faster it could be running (if I had a faster notebook), I feel like upgrading!

So get the Powerbook if you really can't wait, otherwise, take your time to save up the money.

 

Also, a little advice from one college student for another: notebooks are cool and everything, but don't make up your mind for one until you're a few weeks into your first semester. You don't know the teachers you'll have and which of them will rely on computers. Powerpoint/preview/anything is great, until you need a quick way to draw graphs on them with your mouse and keyboard! And if you want to simply start assignments at school, chances are, there are computers at every nook and cranny waiting to be logged into.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot: good luck carrying a 17" laptop around... you'll never make it! Either go for a smaller size, or get an iMac!

 

-Urbz

[(MoC)]

Agreed 15" max.

 

And true, the iMac would be better because if you had to haul it, it would be easy to move from dorm to presentation room etc.

[Special-K]

I just got my MacBook and I must say it's pretty bitching. If you want games and Windows, then you can't have the Powerbook unless you VM it. It really depends everything your gonna do on it. Like I'm going into Audio/Video Editing and I want a MBP, but I got this so I'm not really gonna complain. I haven't done anything really heavy on this except try to run Guild Wars through a VM, but I can say that even with 1GB of ram, it's pretty quick. Can it be quicker, most definitely. But it's something that's not at the top of my list to buy for this thing (the top is a 250 HDD and a 500 External =]). So all in all, get the MacBook. You won't regret it. I don't know when you start college but I'm going to guess it's gonna be in September more or less. By that time you'll have enough cash for whichever notebook you want.