Anyone got a 12inch iBook G4?

[Lucas_Maximus]

I am considering one for uni, seems to be fairly portable.

is the build quality and the screen fairly decent? Also how good is the wireless card?

Just want to see whether what some other owners think. thx

[Parcival]

Yes, I own one, I got it last December for a students' discount price from the university computer shop. The hardware is of really high quality and OSX will make you feel at home, especially if you fire up the Terminal.app I could choose between a Powerbook and an IBM Thinkpad with WinXP/Debian dualboot, so I picked the Powerbook after seeing members of my LUG with their Powerbooks. Most of them have OSX/Debian-Gnome dualboots, but say themselves they're booting OSX more often. I for my part haven't even installed Linux on mine because it perfectly integrates into my network, because it's nice to work with, and because only OSX unlocks its full potential. I would buy a powerbook over any Dell/Acer/Whatever laptop again.

Now, there's also stuff I don't like, of course:


From Linux I am used to being able to modify everything on my desktop to my likes. Forget it when it comes to OSX - you have to work the Apple way.
Related to the previous point: in Apple's Finder (filemanager) you can't cut and paste, only copy and paste. If you wanna cut 'n past, you have to drag the file with your mouse accross the screen - pretty hard when there's no external mouse attached to your Powerbook. The day Apple enables cut 'n paste in Finder will probably be celebrated like an innovation when they choked up their first two-button mouse just weeks ago.
If you want to install Linux, there's no wireless and no 3D acceleration driver, although the 12" Powerbook comes with the nvidia chip.
My LUG friends solved the missing wireless by adding a Netgear PCMCIA card to their Powerbooks. Thing is: the 12 Powerbook doesn't come with a PCMCIA slot, so to go wireless you either have to stick with OSX or find a wireless USB stick that works with your Linux.
Driver support for OSX is crappy if the drivers don't come out of the box with OSX itself. I downloaded the official driver from Microsoft for an USB Intellimouse Explorer. Doesn't work. I downloaded the official driver from Canon for my scanner. Doesn't work. I downloaded the driver for my Palm. Didn't work either until a friend gave me his PalmSuite installation CD from his younger Palm. I downloaded the official driver for our HP Laserjet 1160. Works, as long as the HP is plugged to the Powerbook, but if the Powerbook tries to print on the remote CUPS server - forget it.


To wrap everything up: before you buy a Powerbook, go somewhere where you can play with OSX first and see if you like it. If you like it, you won't regret the money you spent. If you don't like it and plan to run Linux anyway, it's probably better (and cheaper) to buy a Dell and knock Linux onto it.

[Lucas_Maximus]

Cheers exactly what I needed to know.

I will probably just have to get on with OSX, I am not going to bother install Linux since OSX is a *nix I see it as pretty much a pointless exercise.

I am more concerned about build quality than anything else. My old laptop was some generic crap, it just fell apart, and driver support ended I think about 4 years ago.

It going to be used mostly as a stand alone machine. I probably use Open office for MAC, sicne Office 2k4 seems to cost the earth.

[Parcival]

I probably use Open office for MAC, sicne Office 2k4 seems to cost the earth.

Well, there I have a better suggestion (in my eyes): http://www.neooffice.org/

That's why: OpenOffice for OSX needs the X server. That's no problem since you can directly download and install X from the Apple software download website. The problem is when you are doing wordprocessing with a laptop, you'll probably rely on keyboard shortcuts even more than at a desktop computer - and the keyboard shortcuts are not the same inside the OSX desktop compared to inside the X server. Tasks like highlighting text from the current cursor position to the end of the line drove me nuts.

I for my part found it irritating to learn two different sets of keys and of course I kept pressing the wrong combinations. That's why I was looking for an OpenOffice that would fit directly into OSX without the need of an X server, so I found NeoOffice and it uses the same key combinations like the rest of the OS. Now I only fire up the X server for Gimp, but since that's mostly mousework anyway I don't care.

[Lucas_Maximus]

I will never remember the keyboard shortcuts, I used M$ Office for years and I still only remember the most basic ones.