? about apple

Apple makes a good laptop. They are not as fast as the Sager's though. They have awesome battery life and they weight about half of a Sager. You'll have to use MacOS (ack!) and not Windows.. so if you're a Windows expert like me you won't want to switch to a Mac. They won't be noticably better at anything than a Sager, although some say they are a little better at graphics. Audio I'd definately stick with a Sager. Apple is all show and aesthetics... I'd get a Sager to get things done. And if you wanna play games you have to get a Sager because all the games are Windows based...

Well, im sorry that you even used the A word :-P. I'll say here, that im very biased, and hate mac with a passion. Flat out, if you want to play games AND have good battery life, dont get a mac. Its getting better, but they still come nowhere CLOSE to being able to compare to PC in the game market. I've a few friends that use em, one got the new 12", and he loves it, great battery life, and a fun tool for warchalking. But as far as games go, he can't do jack. You need to decide on your priorities. If you actually want to game, dont get a mac. For the same price, you can get a comperable pc system, maybe not a sager since they are heavy. An option you might want to look into is chembook. They are light, have g4-m's in them, and have half decent battery life. Never used one personally, but they do seem to be good laptops.

All in all, if you want to game, dont go mac. i've heard nothin but good things about OSX, other then its on a mac You can get 3-4 hours of word processing from a sager, and i think the weight is worth it, the pure power punch it has just is so nice.

I hope you can make sense out of my rambles, folowup and i'll write more

Check at the store

I know that in the past, the reason Mac's sucked for gaming was primarily because games weren't released for Mac as quickly as they were for PC's, if they were even released at all. Here is my advice, go to CompUSA or Best Buy, and go to the Mac software section and see what games they have. I never go there, but if they have pretty new games, then you would probably be alright, but if the selection doesn't include the new games, then I would guess Mac wouldn't be a good choice. Other things to think about with gaming, is you could probably never borrow a friends game to try out or anything like that.
I think that if you need a good portable system that is light weight, you could find a PC that is comparable to the mac for less money. Since you said you don't need cutting edge gaming capability, you could look for one with the older M7500?? or so. This would save you alot of cash.
I know that if battery life and portability is your goal, the Sagers aren't the right choice. My 5660 is pretty heavy compared to most other laptops I have ever used, not fun to carry around on a daily basis, and I get exactly 2.5 hours of web-surfing/processing on a charge. Good luck.

ok...i'm currently writing this on an iMac 700mhz G4 processor (people say it's comparable to about 2x that on a pc. So 2x700 = 1.4ghz pc) If you wanna play games on this thing...gawd don't. I tried running warcraft 3 on this thing at 640x480 res...laggy as hell I tried it on my 1.2 amd athlon pc at home at 1024x768...smooth like a baby's butt. As for counter strike...they don't have a mac port...so screw that. Now...if you're talking about weight and battery life...apples are AWESOME. These things are so slick and batteries last forever. Apple advertises as 5-6 hours on a single charge but it's about 4-5 hours. Which is incredible compared to the 1.5 hours of a sager. You want to be able to take notes in class with an apple...there's an office equivalent called appleworks that is compatible with word docs and such. Or you can even buy office x for a few hundred bux. Now sound...well i tried using the internal mic on this thing it's it plays back crystal clear. It's like another person talking next to you. Doesnt sound like a recording at all. This mic is sooo awesome. Iono what they have on the ibooks or powerbooks but if they do have an internal mic i would imagine being just as good. All in all from my experiences with apples and my life in college...it's generally not as useful as pc's. That's why i'm planning to get a sager over the summer. So apple desktop and pc laptop. Hope this helps.

Don't forget that you can also run a large number of PC applications (such as word processors/excel etc) under emulation with Virtual PC or Softwindows. This does NOT include games unfortunately, but its worth bearing in mind if only from a compatibility point of view.

I love the new 17" titanium powerbook but sadly the current model is still a little too slow for my liking. That's why I went with the 8887. If Apple had stuck a faster processor and better video card in it I might have changed my mind!

apple&games

for games, apples are no good, no good at all, two people have said it here, and i know countless people IRL. it really is not a consideration. As far as audio goes, there are several people in these here forums that use it for audio editing and such, search those posts, see what they have to say.

The 5660 is great because it allows you to have two batteries, which can put it about par with apple, and for the price, its an extremely better laptop.

maybe a bit off-topic but the apple laptop commercial is HILARIOUS (with the big and small laptops). The first time I saw the guy from Austin Powers (mini-me) pull out that huge laptop I laughed for about 5 minutes!

I'd just wait for intel's next processor, it is suposed to be phenomonal on battery usage. It *should* be availible in thin/light & mid-sized laptops very soon, and definately by summer.

As for macs, there is nothing i can say that hasn't already been said.

mrdeep, I don't think that new processor will be out for a while... maybe Q4, or Q1 next year...

I have nothing against macs...afterall I really like OSX but did anyone manage to see the comparisons in the latest maximum pc magazine (march issue i think)? They put a dual 1.25 g4 against dual AMD 2.0ghz MP and dual 2.8 Xeon processors. The dual was used since this configuration gives the best performance for G4's. Geforce 4ti's were used all around. Anyways, the G4's showing in the benchmarks was pitiful. AMD and Intel beat it handily in every test and Intel more than doubled performance on a number of tests. I think the apps used were jedi knight, quake 2, adobe photoshop, adobe premier and a few others.

Wow... isn't Photoshop supposed to be the Macs strong suit?

In performance? I don't think so. MacOS used to produce better picture quality than Windows. That's why they were preferred when it came to imaging. But not anymore really since Windows 2k came out. Now there really is no difference.

Mac OS is far better than windows (OSX, not OS9). Actually OS9 is better than windows, but not by much. OSX takes the cake as best OS though. Seeing as that it's unix based, and all. Anyways, there are a lot of features available in macs that sagers don't have. Integrated bluetooth, good battery life, DVD-R to name a few. Apple's laptops are well-made and well-supported.

They are not very well supported, unless you pay heavily for Tech support when you pay for your computer. My GF's screen on her iBook went dark (loose wire I guess) and it cost $400 flat rate!! to get it fixed! And Apple offers NO phone support without paying $60 for it in advance! I would say that is Poorly supported!

As for Windows, are you talking about Win2000 or WinXP, cause those never crash, and are very smooth. Even Win98SE is good- better than OS9 in my book. I have heard that OSX is very good.. I've never used it.. but I'm certain that for me (a Windows user) I'll get more done and have less problems with WinXP than with OSX. It can't be that much better.

http://www.graphicpower.com/opinion/...stillsucks.stm

Also:

http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech...hives/442.html