The insurance company look like they might be getting ready to pay up on my burglary, only 1 and 1/2 months after it happened. Although they're getting decidedly shitty about my spare empeg, claiming it's not covered as it's a car stereo. But anyway, i digress.....

I had two PC's stolen, my Myth box and a desktop machine in my study. Although both machines are quite up-to-date, it's dawned upon me that I never really use the desktop machine any more. So replacing it seems a little pointless. My laptop is a 4 year old Tosh Sat Pro which gets daily hammer at home and is beginning to fall apart (literally) it now has some rather annoying habits. So I've decided to use the money from the desktop to buy a new laptop instead.

Now here's the dilemma, should I buy a 12inch iBook for £749 or try and find something Intel based for a similar price? A friend of mine bought a new HP for £500 and it's horrible. £749 seems like a really good price, they're now putting Airport extreme in as standard and bluetooth is only £35. It would also be my final two fingers to Micro$oft (although VirtualPC looks intriguing). So what do you guys think? I know thinfourth converted a couple of years ago and loren and drakino are big Mac users. So come on, is it worth it?

I might know the answer in a couple of weeks, as Apple are lending me a G5 for a while to port some software from the PC to the Mac...

...though at the same time I'll be spending £800 on a new desktop PC for some other work I am doing.

Sigh, another religious discussion...

The answer depends totally on what applications you plan to run on the laptop.

As much as I like the apple computers, there's certain things I just can't run on them which precludes me from using them. But if you research it and find that you can do everything you want on an apple, then I'd say go for it.

If I had to make that decision again I would go for the Mac.

I have a Toshiba Tecra Centrino laptop (in fact I'm using it now as the HD has died in the desktop), while the battery life is very good, it's bigger that I would like and hasn't really lived upto the ideal I was sold.

A mate of mine has a powerbook, it's the perfect solution for a laptop I think, I wouldn't have a mac desktop given but their laptops have to be up there with the best designed objects of all time IMHO

Cheers

Cris.

I don't think there's much Microsoft specific stuff I need. I do a bit of coding in VC++ but that's a minor problem. As long as I can surf the net, read emails, watch a DVD, edit audio and video then I'm happy.

For a lot of people the software is the same (like me). So there's nothing religious about it. It's just a different vendor. I try not to even think about the OS. Though after using Mac OS X on a more personal level (as opposed to testing work) I'm finding mroe and more annoying things about Windows. And surprisingly many of the really annoying things about Mac OS X are getting addressed in software updates or can be worked around with third-party software.

My first concern about the iBook is the small screen size. It's also a bit heavy. I wouldn't recommend the 12" PowerBook though because of the NV graphics of course. The 9200 graphics in the iBook are a bit slouchy for 3D and will be very out-dated for when the new Panther OS comes out (ie. won't be able to use many of the new shader stuff in CoreImage). Also, the iBooks' external display is by default Mirror-Only. Not extended desktop like on the PB's. You used to be able to hack around this though if you need this functionality.

The 15" PowerBook is very nice but a lot more expensive.

I can wholeheartedly recommend any of the Apple notebooks over a large number of PC products (from Toshiba and HP for instance). Especially if you're after things like 6-pin firewire, bluetooth, 802.11g, etc.. If you want to upgrade memory, it might make more sense to do it from a third party (at least on the PB's this is true).

Some of the new Toshiba models look decent, but I don't know their specs. e-Machines also had some snappy units that looked and felt a lot better than offerings from the bigger companies like Dell and HP.

Really look at what software you'll be running to help figure this all out. Also, Virtual PC as well as MS Remote Desktop help to fill the gap when you absolutely need to run some Windows content and performance isn't the greatest concern.

[EDIT] I just saw Andy's latest reply. Get the iBook. Your usage pattern will be a nice match for an Apple notebook. Especially once you factor in being able to run the nice Apple software like iDVD and iMovie. They're a bit limited, but can easily get you by in a pinch. Then there's Motion (which really likes more graphics horsepower and a crap-load of RAM) and Final Cut (Express or Pro), not to mention DVD Studio Pro. They simply have no comparable equivalents for Windows. For the generic stuff like the Web I now run Firefox and I'll be switching mail on my Windows machine over to Thunderbird so I can use the same client and files on the Mac. For MP3 tag editing I run my Windows box as a Remote Desktop in a window on my PowerBook.

Bruno

Mmmm, the Mac is looking better by the second. Just have to get the insurance money sorted first.

Too bad normal laptops and desktops won't drive the new 30" Apple LCD, though. I saw one for the first time last week. It's a jaw-dropping beautiful experience. I just can't see any way to justify the expense, but ... wow.

I don't know wether they were 30inch, but at Selfridges in Manchester they had a G5 running 2 displays, THAT was awesome. So much desktop, it would take me days to fill that shortcuts...

OK, I'll chime in with my new Fujitsu S6210 that I got at Fry's for $1,749.00 a couple of months ago; the centrino processer is very impressive as compared to the PIV and the screen is awesome.

... definately a religious discussion though.

Hm. If you don't game on your laptop, then I think a Mac is a no-brainer.

Just wanted to vouch for my 15" Powerbook. This is the best computer I've ever bought though it was damn pricey. It was like the empeg. I was leary at first but now know it was worth every penny. The old "it just works" adage is very true with OSX. It still surprises me all the time with things that you'd expect an OS to do, but have learned to not expect them by using windows. Little things like that battery swap mentioned above, it's wireless networking slickness, bluetooth slickness... all kinds of slick. I've been using Virtual PC lately for any PC only apps I need (like Garmin Mapsource) and it works flawlessly and surprisingly fast.

Only downer is that with the lates OS upgrade, half of my RAM suddenly disappeared. I can't find any info on it except on Macfixit which is a pay site. I'll be calling Apple as soon as I get home. According to the few posts I have found about it, they swap the logic board and you're good as new.

Everything about the Mac is sketchy. But it just works. Unless it doesn't. Then it's broken.

I agree with Loren, the slickness of the simple and small things make it really shine. Or rather it's the contrived and unimaginable way some of these things are handled in Windows that makes them mind-boggling.

All PowerBooks (including the 15") get piping hot when they're running plugged with their power connnector. Loren, can you also confirm this with yours?

Loren: You might want to send a note to Mike over at XLR8yourMac.com to see if he'll post your problem to his board. That will get other comments up over night and you'll likely do service to others if it hasn't already been mentioned.

Correction to my first post: I meant to write new TIGER OS (10.4), not Panther (10.3 which is already out).

Bruno

Re: the head issue. YES. It gets too hot to touch if you are doing disk or processor intensive tasks, especially while plugged in. I can't keep it on my legs for long once the fan kicks on, it's just too damn hot. It's definitely not a deal breaker, since every laptop I've used lately has the same issue. It's the nature of the beast it seems.

I'll deal with the RAM thing when i get home... too much going on at the moment. Thanks for the tip though!

One problem with Apple laptops is they don't make diddy ones. If Apple made a 10in-screen Ibook or Powerbook I'd have got that rather than buying Hugo's hand-me-down Vaio. As it is I'm pretending it's a Macintosh by running Windows XP on it.

Peter

I think it's settled, an iBook it is. The nice lady from the insurance company is ringing me tomorrow to discuss my claim, so fingers crossed!

EDIT: And I'm a Pooh-Bah as well!!! Nice one!!!

Welcome to the bright side.

Well, I've got the Mac. It is a Dual G5 2.5GHz, 512Mb with a 20 inch screen.

The hardware is work of art. Probably the most desirable kit of hardware I have ever used.

I haven't used MacOS since 7.5, so I need to find my way around MacOS X. It still appears to have some of the annoying quirks of the old MacOS, the most irritating being the lack of comprehensive keyboard control in dialog boxes.

Edit: Ok, I found the option that enables better keyboard navigation in dialogs

My work Dell (D600) was brilliant under Win2k - really fast hibernate and re-awakening (11 seconds to boot!) but under XP it really sucks. Hibernate does not work at all, so I have to use standby - which has never failed to lose work if I have any apps open! It also fails to cope with USB devices or networks being changed while in Standby under XP. It was fine with all these under WIn2k.

Luckily, except for connecting to the corporate LAN, I can run it in Linux for all other occasions and it runs beautifully. It is a good machine.

I quite like MAC OS X, but still feel it has some way to go and it misses out on a lot of the things I would use regularly, so in my opinion a good PC laptop with Linux will always beat an Apple machine (but from your needs I think Apple is the way to go for you)

Hmmm - turned into a bit of a blether...can you tell I'm really hacked off at XP. Soooo blimming sucky!!! Why would anyone write an OS like this? Aaaaarrkkkk!

Interesting - the only problem I have with hybernating on my Compaq Evo N1020v (under XP) is that it refuses to wake up if I have close to all virtual memory used (I have half a gig of physical mem and currently about 1,2G of swap file), which happens extremely rarely. I hardly shut it down at all, just hybernate. Batery meter is reasonably accurate (but the batery itself is nothing to write home about). On my old Thinkpad it had more or less 4 positions: 100%, 80%, 10%, 0%...

But when will Microsoft manage to make an actually multitasking operating system? When I load a database, or run a Paint Shop Pro batch, or doing anything else that is both CPU and disk intensive, it takes about 20 seconds to do something as trivial as minimize a window!