[Ti] Which to Buy?

[b]

William Benton paused, thought it over, and spoke thusly:

>	I have been allowed to buy a new laptop for work - I was told to 
>get a top of the line. I responded that I could do this for probably 
>$2500 due to the fact that I can install my own memory and don't 
>require a 17" display. What would you do? What should I do? If it 
>requires more $, I will say so but I want to reasonable. Whatever I 
>get needs to last a couple of years. I currently have a Ti 400. I 
>don't want to make the mistake that I made with that one. The 1st 
>gen Ti was crippled by design. have a speedy enough desktop at work 
>and at home so the Powerbook is mostly for work on the road which 
>may be only a few days a month but much will be done with it in 
>conjuction with the desktops. My work machine is a new Dell PC but 
>it won't do what the P'Book will as flexibly. I use a combination of 
>Excel, GoLive, Photoshop, iPhoto, OSX PDF, Acrobat, Omni Graffle and 
>lots of scans. I can plug my work LCD into the powerbook for work 
>when needed at the desk and use the dualie when at home.

I'd look for a re-conditioned 1 Gig 15" Ti,  (a lot of them are 
around with AppleCare still valid), and use the extra cash for a 
Kensington TurboMouse Pro trackball.  That's what I did, for the most 
part. The TurboMouse Pro is amazing for Photoshop and all apps, 
actually. It fits in the Targus Powerbook leather bag, so it'll 
probably fit in others, as well. It's programmable, has more buttons 
than you need, is ergonomic (in a way :=) ). And you'll find yourself 
using the Powerbook at home with your desktop's monitor, and that's 
where the built-in trackball just loses it, compared to the 
Kensington. My .02

I use Photoshop (the new version 8, more solid than ever), Final Cut 
Pro, all the Macromedia apps, Quark 6, etc, and if I was confined to 
the built-in trackball, even 2 days a month, I'd have gone 'postal' 
by now. There are foldable keyboards out there also, from what I 
understand.


~flipper