New here!

[Life Long Learner]

on 2/23/03 12:27 AM, joe w runnels at kuleinc at juno.com wrote:

> Hi all,
SNIP
>  I know this guy at work paid $1500 for an 800 Mhz Ice
> book with OSX and 640 MB of RAM, I don't think I coudl get that mcuh
> money together all at once, my credit card has an $800 limit and 15%
> interest rate.  Any suggestions?   are there stores that woudl accept
> payments for the laptop?  I have some other mac hardware I could sell,
> liek IIFX's and some PPC 7100s, a WGS 7250 120 Mhz, stuff liek that, but
> I don't think I could get $1500 if I old it ALL...
> 
I have owned 4 iBooks since they first came out. My sons all have iBooks and
I use a 1Ghz PB G4 with Superdrive, so I can compare performance between
them. One of my sons has the 800 mhz Combo with 32MB of video ram and 640 MB
of ram. The other two have 700 mhz basic models with 16MB of video ram and
384MB of ram. They all use Mac OS X 10.2.4, and Virtual PC running Win98 for
some school curriculum, and play networked Warcraft III and Starcraft among
other fairly demanding games. From what I can tell, you would be very happy
with the basic model with 16MB of video ram. In fact, probably anything with
a 600mhz G3 on up and 16MB of video ram to take advantage of Quartz Extreme
will seem pretty much as fast as a G4 at the same speed settings for most
things you do. There's not much difference in performance between my son's
800mhz iBook with 32MB of video ram and my PB 1Ghz with 1GB of ram and 64MB
of video ram for all intents and purposes. Since I have a superdrive and he
only has a combo, he can actually burn cds faster than I can. Obviously I
can render video faster and burn DVDs and with the video out capabilities I
run two additional flat panel monitors while he is stuck with one, but it's
not a big deal for 90% of what either of us do. Oh, and they all have way
better airport functionality than I do. I might as well have a PC card
antenna as opposed to the built-in airport.

Watch places like www.smalldog.com, subscribe to www.dealmac.com's daily
deals, and bookmark the search on eBay for iBooks in the 600mhz range with
16MB video. You'll love it. You might even find one with a combo drive for
under $800. I expect the iBooks will be updates sometime in April or May,
and if so, the prices will be even more competitive. But don't worry about
waiting; actually quite a lot of downward pressure was exerted by the 12"
Powerbook. A number of iBook users will be moving to that form factor
because they originally couldn't justify the larger, costlier PowerBooks,
but now that one is in the price range of the originally priced 14" iBooks
but int he size and weight category of the 12" iBook, there are quite a few
upgrading, so you should be able to find some good deals over the next 60
days on a 600-700 mhz iBook with combo drive, I should think.

Sell everything you don't need for whatever you can get, and have as much as
you can ready so that when you purchase, you can use your credit card for
safety-sake, but pay it off asap. I do that all the time. I have the money
in the bank but use a credit card and pay off the card before the bill hits.

Jeffrey