While on vacation I was able to spend some time drooling over Bob and Morgana’s 17 inch powerbooks. Bob isn’t a crazy mac-head, in fact he was laughing at all the people who ran out and got Tiger and were complaining that things weren’t perfect. He’s got a BSD background, and told me that he thought he’d put pure BSD or Linux on the laptop when he first bought it, but it’s been 2 years now and he’s happily working in OSX with fink.
Same story I’ve heard a dozen times, and every time I hear it, it makes me want one. Really want one. I’m in the market for a laptop afterall, why not go with mac? They’re so pretty, they have good graphics, they have good sound, they are geek chic.
Now I’m trying to figure out if this is honestly what I want, and which one I want.
What do I want from a laptop?
*nix
Music
Movies
Stability
Portability
This isn’t much to ask. My old 333mhz Compaq could fit most of these needs, lacking in stability because the hardware was just awful. It’s the stability that concerns me when looking at used laptops, I want something that just works.
How about a cheap new x86 laptop? I am concerned that a cheap x86 laptop will drive me up the wall with Linux compatibility issues, and Windows is just not an option (again, I want stability).
With a mac I know I’m getting quality hardware, a pre-installed OS that I can be at home with. I’ve been looking at the Powerbooks, and they are oh so pretty, but I’d want the 15 inch, and those start at $2000. A friend suggested that I just go with the iBook, I configured a 14 inch with a 60G harddrive, 512M ram and bluetooth for a total of about $1500, quite resonable.
I don’t know, I have to save up for a little while before I buy one, so I’ll be at least September (my birthday) before I purchase anything. I have some time to think this through. Ah but macs are so pretty!