New laptop suggestions for school

[Chowdy]

Hello all.

The school year is coming to an end and it's time for college. You know what that means-- laptops!

I'm in the market for a new one, and i'm eyeing the ibook.

I have a few questions.

-Will there be a G5 notebook from apple? ever? are there any dates?
-How is the battery life on the later G4 ibooks?
-Would an ibook be suitable for CSE classes?

Thanks!

PS: I'm totally new to macs and, so, i don't know anything about them.

[Too Smart]

I don't know the answers to your first two questions, but I do know that ibooks are great for programming. They have the command line interface just like unix and all the unix commands work. You can get all the unix programming tools for it, like gcc, java, emacs, etc. It's the power and stability of BSD but the ease of use of Windows.

Also, you can usually get a discount on Apple hardware/software through your college.

[macklin01]

This is too weird. I could swear that I read your post verbatim a few days ago and answered it, and yet I can't find any record of any such post of mine. :eek:

I think they'd be great for programming. There are only two things to think about:

1) You may not be able to use some software programs that are required by classes. (For instance, perhaps MS Visual Studio. And if you're going into CS, you'll certainly want to learn how to work with the majority OS/architecture.)

2) endianness for PPC/IBM chips is opposite that of x86, so you'll run into some programming problems if you're doing bitwise operations. In essence, you'd have to reverse your code in some cases. This could be a little ugly when developing and turning in coding assignments. -- Paul

[Pinky]

Is there something a Mac can do a PC cannot? I know there's plenty a PC can do that a Mac can't... or am I being PC-centric? :rolleyes:

I've had the opportunity to play with a few Macs in the past 3 years. They've come a long way since I had last used them. My only issue is that everything I can do on a Mac I can do on a PC. I believe all Mac software has a PC equivalent. Maybe not ALL, but a mjority? A higher percentage than vice-versa.

So it begs the question - what good are they really? They're not cheaper, and aside form a simplified networking protocol/functionality, there isn't anything compelling to explain why they still even exist...