iBook

[psyco18]

Hay im considering buying a 12" i book but i would like to test one out first, does anyone know of any places that would rent out a ibook for a week to help me decide if it is what i am after.

- Mick

[ShaneHm2]

as far as i know no places would let you do that whatsoever with any product except for a test drive on a car or whatever and 30 day money back gurantee thats the only things i can think of

[Dr Kildare]

CompNow have a iMac test drive offer...
http://www.compnow.com.au/testdrive/

Doubt you'll do much better than that.
I'm sure most Apple resellers will let you fiddle with an iBook instore & answer any queries you have.

Been using one myself for six months now & its great.
Still use my PC for gaming though.

[psyco18]

ey Dr Kildare would u mind if we had a chat on msn or somthing?

[Dr Kildare]

No worries. Should be on later tonight.
Add mjsweeney@hotmail.com

[amanvell]

Originally Posted by Dr Kildare

Been using one myself for six months now & its great.
Still use my PC for gaming though.

Had my iBook for almost 12mths now, it is my most used toy

[xsive]

Loving my new ibook. It's just so great to use. Didn't take more than a couple of days to get the feel for OSX and the trouble was well worth it.

[Dailian]

Originally Posted by amanvell

Had my iBook for almost 12mths now, it is my most used toy

Heh, i've had mine for about the same... it's in pretty good condition, considering...

I've dropped it twice, once onto concrete and once onto carpet, both times from about 1.5m high and the second time with the lid open... It is kind of misaligned now, but still shuts ok if i push it to the side a little

[psyco18]

yeah they look realy good except a few things

1) all the software seem expensive, do you guys use ms office for osx or somthing else? Also how much does it cost ( im a student so i can get it cheaper i think )

2) Do you have wireless networks? Whats the go with macs and normal pc networks, will it work with my netgear access point.

3) NTFS support, i read that OSX 10.4 ( tiger? ) has can read and write to ntfs driver. can older version do this or should i upgrade to the latest osx?

thats about all ive got for now, ill think of some more stuff for later lol

[amanvell]

Originally Posted by psyco18

yeah they look realy good except a few things

1) all the software seem expensive, do you guys use ms office for osx or somthing else? Also how much does it cost ( im a student so i can get it cheaper i think )

As a student you can get cheaper software for things like MS Office (usually if their is a deal on the Win version there is one on the Mac one). Personally I find that as a student I'd find it impossible to afford 1 version let alone 2, so I make do as best I can.

You will appreciate how much easier it is to install and remove software from OSX. Drag it into Applications to install, drag it to trash to remove (except for the occasional bastard, like Matlab or Office, but even when you need to run an installer everything is quick and painless). There are stories of students getting the latest MS Office by taking their iPods into Apple stores, and dragging Office onto them via firewire. Very few Apple programs have any sort of security, and they rarely use CD-keys either Big change from friggin around with some Windows apps.

2) Do you have wireless networks? Whats the go with macs and normal pc networks, will it work with my netgear access point.

Usually you should have no problems. If it is a standard 802.11b/g network then it should work, I've had no troubles with any standard network so far. I'd class a non-standard network as one that requires separate software for authentication, eg. at my uni they have a [shitty] wireless network that requires the use of 3rd-party tunneling software. The wireless itself isn't secured at all (no auth), but once connected you need to setup the secure tunnel and everything goes through that. Luckily there is an Apple version on their software, but if you were planning on using it anywhere that has some form of wierdo proprietry tunnelling then you could have some issues. On the whole though, you should have no probs.

3) NTFS support, i read that OSX 10.4 ( tiger? ) has can read and write to ntfs driver. can older version do this or should i upgrade to the latest osx?

Don't know. I know that Panther (OSX10.3) couldn't write NTFS, and had issues reading it; there was work being done on a OSX/Linux GPL NTFS driver that at the time randomly destroyed the data I found that it was just easier setting up a FAT32 share on any external HDD I needed to use. Partitions shared over a network however via SMB can be any format, as the host computer deals with it. So if you were only planning on accessing a Win NTFS HDD via a network then there is no need to worry (the only problem is setting up the permissions, however has plenty of info) .

thats about all ive got for now, ill think of some more stuff for later lol

Any questions you have, feel free to post, or PM me and I'll give you my email address. Once you get used to it OSX is a blast!

[psyco18]

thanks amanvell,

ive basicly decided to get the 12" ibook from power.com.au, the model im looking at is the 12" 1.2 ghz 256 ram 30 gb hdd combo drive and airport extreme which is priced @ $999. Ill be adding another ~512 ram to it as well. I was just wondering if anyone has bought anything through these guys before? and also what OS would they sell it with.

Thanks to everyone that has posted so far, i appreciate it.

[amanvell]

Originally Posted by psyco18

thanks amanvell,

ive basicly decided to get the 12" ibook from power.com.au, the model im looking at is the 12" 1.2 ghz 256 ram 30 gb hdd combo drive and airport extreme which is priced @ $999. Ill be adding another ~512 ram to it as well. I was just wondering if anyone has bought anything through these guys before? and also what OS would they sell it with.

Thanks to everyone that has posted so far, i appreciate it.

No idea, never dealt with them. Got my thru edustore@apple.

[xsive]

Do those refurbished ibooks come with 3 or 12 months warranty? I was looking at getting the same thing from mac1 in Canberra until I went in and sussed it out. They also wanted $360 for applecare so I thought forget it... and bought a new one instead

EDIT: forgot to add, Mac1 was selling all their refurbished stock with Tiger which was a nice bonus. Wish I'd picked up one of their super-cheap minis. They had 1.25GHz boxes for $399