Powerbook Cost Justified? Options

[darcyb62]

It has finally come time for me to upgrade my hardware. I have been currently been using an old PIII 500mHz with 512Meg of ram and a slow hard disk. I use Tracktion for my host and with a lot track freezing, it becomes somewhat usabe (but just barely)...

Up until recently I had been considering staying on the Windows side, but with the recent introduction of the Mac Mini I decided to take a more serious look at what Apple could offer, so I've tried to do a bit of comparison. I'm committed to purchasing a notebook and I tried to target $2500 (Cdn) for cost.

This is what I have come up with...

On the Apple side:

Powerbook G4 combo drive
15.2-inch TFT Display
1280x854 resolution
1.5GHz PowerPC G4
512MB DDR333 SDRAM
80GB 5400rpm Hard Drive
ATI Mobility Radeon
9700 (64 MB DDR)
Backlit keyboard
Gigabit Ethernet
FireWire 400 & 800
Analog audio in/out
DVI & S-Video out

Cost is $2499 (cdn)

On the PC side:
Dell Inspiron 9200
Intel® Pentium® M 755 Processor (2GHz/400MHz FSB)
17" ultrawide xga+
1 gig sdr ram
128MB ATI's™ Mobility Radeon™ 9700
24X CD-RW/DVD Combination Drive
60GB 7200rpm Hard Drive

I might be wrong on this, but it seems to me that from a performance perspective, Dell would be the better option. In addition, there seems to be a greater number of low cost / free plugins for thw Windows side verses the Mac side (but I might be totally wron with respect to this as my experiience to date has been solely limited to the PC side).

I am really trying to justify the move to Mac but its been a difficult journey. Hopefully this forum can help provide me with some added insight.

Thanks.

[mfroman]

I bought my first PowerBook back in 2000, after after spec'ing out as close to identical systems (firewire, etc), the Apple came out cheaper by the barest margin.

However, that was looking at _hardware_ only. When you consider the included software, the stability, and the enormous advantage in not dealing with viruses and spyware, you'll be way ahead. I cannot stress enough what not dealing with viruses and spyware does for you.

I now have a PowerBook G4 1.5 GHz, with 1G RAM. It makes a great portable music machine. Meanwhile, the old PowerBook soldiers on serving music in the home theater. I have had _excellent_ service from the Apple customer care people on the two occasions that I've needed it.

Once you buy one, you'll never want to go back. You'll love it.