Apple Macintosh iBook and iPod

[silenthunterstudios]

My old Wall Street looks like it is going to bite the dust pretty soon. My uncle, who is pretty Mac savvy, is performing last minute surgery on it, but I think it's a goner. I am looking at buying either an iBook or an iMac. I'm really only looking for about the standard 40GB, the standard memory, but it has to have at least a dvd player, I would like to get a dvd recorder. Before everybody says I should get a Windows based computer, I like the Macintosh OSX system, and do a lot of graphic design work on the side at home. Of course, I am looking for a good deal. My uncle got my Wall Street model off of eBay for me, but I am wary about buying another one off of eBay. Are there any sites I should check out before I tie up Google and Froogle? Also, about the iPod, I still have cds etc, some MP3 files, but I don't have enough to fill up a regular iPod. Should I get the iPod Shuffle or the smaller iPod? I am just looking at the iPods for walking and possibly playing over my car stereo right now. If this should be moved to TGBU, I apologize Gollnick and KV. THanks in advance.

 

[Point44]

do you want a laptop or a desktop. an ibook is a laptop isn't it ? while an imac is a desktop.

with both systems i doubt you'll get that much advantage for photo editing or graphic design unless you get a powerbook or a powermac. even if using a mac, graphic design or photo editing on standard amount of ram is ridiculous. For these purposes you need 1gb of ram.

i would recommend a mac if you're gonna do photo editing or graphic design and you're willing to spend it to equip it (powerbook or powermac) but for much less money you can get a better Windows system. I've seen the imac's and the graphics are kinda lousy. For a basic system doing nothing intensive the imacs and ibooks are great though.

Get a windows system if you can't afford a true mac. graphics design on an imac or ibook would not give much advantage (or any advantage) over a windows system.

The ipod however is superb although if you don't have that many albums paying so much for a 40gb or 20gb player is useless. Plus how many albums can you listen to in one charge anyway.

The shuffle is great. Super small and stylish. 1gb is capable of storing more than 12 albums ripped at high quality. Not the crappy 128kbps.

The ipod mini offers 4gb so if you've got 50 albums you wanna put on it then that'll be a fine purchase as well.

However, in a couple of weeks time Sony is revealing a direct competition to the shuffle. 50 hours battery life and super fast charging. Plus it'll have an fm tuner. Almost the same size. Check that out.

 

[Steven Roos]

If you don't want to get the big iPod, buy the iPod Mini! Don't buy the iPod Shuffle unless you already have a standard iPod.

 

[stjames]

I have to use a Windows system in order to mirror and program certain moving light operating systems. If not I would have an iBook as I prefer the Mac OS and they have a great power to weight to price ratio as well as good battery life. I ended up getting a Sony Vaio, heavy and lousy battery life but good screen and power and still has the serial and parallel ports I need standard.

I just recieved a 6g iPod Mini and love it, small but not tiny, easy to navigate, good battery life. All around great gear.

 

[HankS]

OS X takes off at 1gb of ram. Very little swap is used until you run some ram hungry programs like photoshop, then 2gb is better. I'm also assuming that you run your like mine, with most of my apps up and running. The new iMac is nice, G5, and the graphics are better, but you can't upgrade them! If you're serious about photoshop, you'll want a powermac, even a used mirrored door or quicksilver would be better as long as it's a dual processor since you can upgrade the video card. 10.3 takes advantage of Quartz extreme as well as the new 10.4 coming out next week.

hs

 

[Chiro75]

I have a 2004 iBook with the 933MHz Power PC chip and 640 MB of RAM. It runs GREAT! I have had zero problems with it. I run Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign all the time with no problems (I'm no pro, though). Mine has the 14" screen and the computer is just great. If you are a student, an educator, or you know a student or educator you can get Apple's discount through their website. It's well worth it. My wife is a teacher and that's how I got this one.

I play games on mine, run my chiropractic office off of it. LIterally it does everything I want it to for home and business. We recently put an Airport Express base station at home, too, so you can wirelessly run iTunes to home stereos that are hooked up to it.

The current iBooks are quite a step up from mine, and mine is great, so I don't think you can miss out unless you are needing professional level video editing capabilities. For a desktop, it's still really tough to beat the eMac, too. My iBook has the DVD player, but not the superdrive (which is the player/recorder). You may want to try smalldog electronics, too. They do refurbs and have pretty decent prices. With Apple you're not going to find much price variation because I think they limit their MSRP, but if you can swing an education discount I think you save something like 20%.