iBook/PowerBook vs. PC Laptops??

What can anyone tell me about the differences, pros, and cons between Apple's iBook and PowerBook Laptops versus other "regular" PC Laptops, such as Gateway, Dell, and Compaq? Which is better for what? I've never used a Mac OS. Any info, opinions or comparisions is greatly appreciated! (I'm laptop shopping)

 

Apple Latops are better with batterylife as PPC CPUs are more efficent in that regard then Intel and AMD CPUs.

Also like all Apples they keep their value longer. Meaning in say 2 years time its value would have gone down less then other laptops so you can sell it for more.

MacOS X is powered by Unix technology making MacOS X the best Unix on the market today, that is great if your a geek as it means you can open a CLI (Command Line Interface) terminal and really get your hands dirty also run Unix andLinux programs while still having that simplicity of the MacOS desktop.

 

One costs alot of money, and the other costs alot of fucking money. If you make music, get a mac. If you like freeBSD, like the above poster said, get mac. If you watch porn and play video games all day, get the PC.

 

Apple hardware is very well built, you shouldn't have problems with durability.
Mac OS X is very stable and secure - and very important fact - there are no real viruses, trojans or similar awful things on Mac OS X
I use Powerbook 15" for my work (music production) and it's great and reliable machine.

 

In my research, I am leaning towards a Powerbook. I just wish that I could "babysit" someone elses so I could try it out and see how I like it... but what I'd be using it for is mostly homework (word processing, presentations, etc) and internet surfing like here on hipforums, research, BlackBoard or other type educational stuff, ebay stuff, chatting, and fun, etc. The only video games I really play are the ones on Yahoo Games, I don't really play the kind you buy and install on a computer. And if I do want to play that type of game I have this desktop for that. What's important for me is for it to run fast, especially when surfing the web ( I plan to use ethernet or wi-fi) and hold a lot of files. How's the browser on MAC OS? Does anyone experience any problems with it? I was worried about that because most websites seem designed with IE in mind.

So does it sound like, from what I've said I'd use it for, that a Powerbook would be a good choice for me?

 

Default browser (shipped with system) on a Mac is Safari. It's really fast and almost all pages (which conform to W3C standard) are displayed correctly. I've noticed some minor layout problems on some non-standard web pages, but nothing bad. The best alternative to Safari is well-known and so popular Mozilla Firefox.
There are also various Netscape and other Mozilla browsers and Opera.

I'm writing this now using Safari (Hip forums work correctly, of course).

Microsoft Office 2004 (Mac versions have different version numbers) is FULLY compatible with PC versions, so file exchange is not a problem.

For chatting and instant messaging, clients for ICQ, AIM, MSN, Yahoo are available. There are also some IRC clients (I recommend Snak).

Wireless is my primary choice for networking, I've set up at home small wireless router connected to a cable modem. With most routers, this is just plug-and-play.

 

Thanks so much! You all have been very helpful... of course more information is always welcome.

 

You are free to ask me everything you want to know about Macs

 

If I had the money, I would get a mac over a PC any day. Just overall better, a lot of games are being published for them now too last time I checked. They also do not lose their value very fast. If you bought a 2000 dollar pc today in a year you would be lucky to get half that IMO. In two years its basicly a peice of shit. It was like that in early 02 atleast, anymore they have sort of slowed down on new hardware it seems like.

 

The biggest diferance that should matter to you shouldn't have anythign to do with battery life, pixel depth, or form factor..these are completey diferant platforms..You pretty much aren't going to run anything except for MacOS on a powerbook, on an intel laptop you can run many flavors of *nix, or any version of winblows.

Do you know how to use windows, do you know how to use MacOS? If the answer to either of these is no, do you really want to learn a new operating system now?

 

On a Apple laptop you can run Mac OS X, various flavors of UNIX (Linux, FreeBSD, Darwin, OpenBeOS....), and if you desperately need to run windows application which is not available for Mac, there is also VirtualPC - Windows emulator.

Mac OS X has very intuitive interface which is easy to learn and use.

 

I HEART MY POWERBOOK

once you buy MAC,
you never go back

Apple 4 ever

 

PC are however better in the bang for the buck department, and in general are vastly more compatible with software/hardware...

 

And on PCs there are viruses, worms,trojans, spyware, malware...blue screens of death, etc. Unknown things on Mac

 

I use a pc, and have no viruses spyware etc... It's simple, install linux... Fact is, PCs are cheaper and more powerful...

 

But have you seen MacOS X? It is some sexy Unix:sunglasse and the XServer G5 can kick ass. So yhea Macs are not cheap but the high end Macs are some powerful.

 

personally i am not a fan of mac hardware. granted they generally source there stuff from large companys like sony and whatnot, theres less compitition in the mac hardware market due to the fact that companys make the stuff for mac put a mac name on them and mac sets the pricing. as far as software goes i would stick with osx, but the overall feel of a mac os just makes me want to thow the box out the window.

dont forget you can also run these on a pc, and in some cases have greater module support depending on os and build.

back to the original question. read around, compare your needs for the computer and what you want to spend to reviews and the market. either way your most limiting factor is budget.

 

Mac OS X is far, far more user-friendly than ANY linux distribution.