Buying a laptop.....

[crystalmethod]

Hello all!

So, I'm buying a new laptop for my second year of school at university and I was wondering if you guys have any suggestions or can help me out with my purchase. Right now I'm leaning towards getting (probably old or refurb) G3 iBook as they can be had for rather cheap, but I'm a little scared of going full fledged for Apple, though I am quite comfortable using it since I've used Macs all through high school, designing flash animations and webpages and such. The main thing that attracts me to Macs is the way things are integrated on them so well, and they way they are, by comparison to Windows, MUCH more secure.

Anyway, what kinds of things can I expect to NOT be able to do on a Mac? What programs won't work anymore? Trillian, MSN, Direct Connect? Is there really anything that I can't do? Also, I plan to travel a lot, is the iBook good as far as using it in a foreign country?

And if PC is the best route, what should I go for? Centrino seems pretty hot now but I haven't really been following the industry lately cuz its just too crazy and fast paced. SO, please guys, help a poor starving Canadian student out!

 

[Cloud121]

I'd just like to say something here:

If you're looking to buy a laptop, why think about Macs? There are no Mac laptops!

Although there are 'Books! 'Books tend to be much better than laptops. :lol: :thumbs-up:

 

[Krelian]

If you're interested in PC laptops you have a few options:

Centrino - Pentium M based: great trade off of power to battery life, also typically the lightest and thinnest PC laptops. Price range: $1400 - $2000

Athlon64 - AMD64 based: your best balance for price and performance, especially for gaming. Price range: $1100 - $1800

AthlonXP - AthlonXP-M: suprisingly an Athlon64 pulls about the same battery life, and although it won't perform as high you can find them VERY cheap. Price range: $700 - $1300

Pentium 4 - Intel's performance chip: typically the baseline to wich all else is compared, the ideal processor for content creation applications (especially the Hyper-Threading models). Price range: $1500 - $1900

Celeron - Intel's worst (I mean affordable) chip: low cost and low performance if you're looking for a cheap laptop for the love of God go to an AthlonXP. Price range: $600 - $1300

I'm actually a fan of the 14" iBook, they're great performers with good battery life in a fairly light weight package.

My choice laptops would be either the 14" iBook w/ 512MB PC2100 ($1300), Toshiba M30 Centrino (starts at $1400), or an Athlon64 (Compaq actually makes a nice line of these).

~Krelian

 

[schi0249]

The nice things with Mac is, get a good enough system and run virtual PC for any PC based aps you need to run. That program works great. I run both Win 98 and 2000.

 

[crystalmethod]

Any info on VirtualPC? What are the requirements...how's it work exactly?

 

[Cloud121]

I don't know exactly how it works, but I believe you need a fairly good system for it. My guess would be.. 500 MHZ G4? My friend has a 667 MHZ G4 TiBook, and it runs fine on his.

 

[IceDigger]

I have a friend who sells laptops, awesome deals.

www.pctorque.com

 

[Alexvrb]

They have/will have some awesome new low-power Athlon 64s that are almost in the power consumption range of Pentium-M, but I don't know if they're in laptops yet. If power is a serious concern, get a Pentium-M based system, they are decently fast too. If performance is a big concern but you don't want to shell out TOO much, I'd second Krelian's recommendation of an Athlon 64.

Unless of course you get an iBook, in which case you can run some PC software, but I wouldn't count on stellar performance while emulating an x86 windows enviroment. So don't buy it if you don't plan on using mostly Mac stuff.

 

[schi0249]

I have a 667 with 512 MB of RAM. I mainly use it for make stuff. Though I do use my version of office on it. I'm too cheap to buy the PC and Mac versions.

For my wife, she needed it for word, email, internet... the basics. We got her a Pentium M. It works great for her. And the computer has a good battery life.