I’m usually not much for the bottom of the line models, I tend to always try to get the maxed out version of whatever product line I am getting in the theory that I will be happier with it longer, but this is probably a good move for Apple. A lot of budget-minded people who would never consider Macs before because they only had higher end models might consider this:
Apple to drop sub-$500 Mac bomb at Expo
With iPod-savvy Windows users clearly in its sights, Apple is expected to announce a bare bones, G4-based iMac without a display at Macworld Expo on January 11 that will retail for $499, highly reliable sources have confirmed to Think Secret.
The new Mac, code-named Q88, will be part of the iMac family and is expected to sport a PowerPC G4 processor at a speed around 1.25GHz. The new Mac is said to be incredibly small and will be housed in a flat enclosure with a height similar to the 1.73 inches of Apple’s Xserve. Its size benefits will include the ability to stand the Mac on its side or put it below a display or monitor.
(via TivoCommunity)
In our case, we have a couple old Window’s boxes of Brandy’s which could probably be cobbled together with the best pieces of both boxces to make a adequite working computer for Amy, but putting a Windows machine on our network, with all the problems Windows has, stikes fear into me! Cynthia just called me yesterday cause her machine is absolutely infested with spyware, trojans, and viruses and she is having trouble getting it clean again. Sure, you can be careful and keep a Windows machine clean. But it is just more work. YOu actually have to think about those things. Although the situation may change, at the moment you just have a lot less of that to worry about on a Mac.
Not to mention they are just cooler and better in every other way imaginable as well. :-)
Anyway, a budget level Mac might fit the bill perfectly.
I think she would prefer a laptop though. :-)
And then Brandy will need one too.
And I need one too.
OK, budget was just broken. Oh well!
And, I should also submit, this is from a rumor site with a spotty track record. Sometimes they get stuff right, sometimes they don’t.
I think it’s a great plan for Amy! I will just inherit your old laptop when you upgrade. I am sure it will be happier without 30G of junk mail. :-)
And I will spray paint it purple.
Of course, I’ll get all jealous of Amy if we get this for her, because this new Mac (if true), despite being entry level bottom of the line in January 2005, is still much better than my old Powerbook which was the top of the line Powerbook back in February 2001 when I bought it.
Urg!
Yeah, and it’s still a Mac.
My roommate used to play Party Poker on her work laptop. Then she, uh, changed jobs and had to give up that laptop. So she bought some Powerbook. Well guess what, no Party Poker for the Mac. Not much of anything for the Mac as far as I can tell. So I took pity on her and donated my trusty old K6-III+ 450 @522 to her Party Poker cause. Her shiny Mac sits idly now.
Do the Macs have 2-button mouses yet?
Maybe not “Party Poker” but there are plenty of Poker and other card games of high quality. I have yet to find a piece of software I needed or really wanted that I could not get a Mac version of. With the exception of Garmin GPS software, which I ran on my Mac under VirtualPC with no problem.
(Of course, I’m not much into the PC Gaming world, if you are a hard core gamer, the Mac is not for you. The most popular games have Mac versions that are as good or better than the PC versions, although sometimes they come out a bit later, but games that aren’t in the very top tier sales wise often don’t bother with a Mac version. Personally, I don’t use my computer for that, and if I ever really did want to do games, I’d go buy an actual game box.)
And Macs have supported 2 (and more) button mice natively in the OS for years. Just buy your favorite USB mouse and plug it in and it will work without any additional work at all.
Please tell her to mail me her unused Powerbook. I would be most happy to give it a good home.
Maybe it was an ibook? Is there such a thing? It wasn’t very big. Pretty slow too. Lot of style, little substance, as far as I could tell.
There is an iBook. They are the “consumer” level laptop as opposed to the “professional” level laptop. More info can be had at:
http://www.apple.com/ibook/
and
http://www.apple.com/powerbook/
The iBooks are usually the last of Apple’s line to get upgraded to better chipsets and higher speeds, so yes, they are clunkier than other of their products. And this was even more so a couple of years ago than it is today. But the iBook (at the base configuration) is at the moment the slowest computer Apple sells.
Right now the laptops (iBook and Powerbook) are all G4’s and the iBook ranges from 1.2 GHz to 1.33 GHz while the Powerbook ranges from 1.33 Ghz to 1.5 GHz. (Remember comparing GHz to Intel type chips doesn’t work, the PPC chips do more work per cycle than Intel chips, so you have to use other benchmarks… the effective user experienced speeds on these machines is comperable to that on similarly configured and priced Windows laptops.)
The desktop units (as opposed to laptops) are of course available in much faster configurations. (And with the G5 chip which adds a big performance boost of its own even aside from GHz.)
Powerbooks are overdue for an update though. On average they have been updated every 171 days, while at the moment it has been 254 days since the last update. So an update could come at any time now. I wouldn’t be buying one right now even if I was ready to buy. I would wait for the next update.
iBooks are mid-cycle. On average they are updated every 158 days and it has only been 71.
(See here for details on the average update lengths and rumors of updates and such.)
Oh, and of course Brandy can spray paint this computer purple once I have a new one. Of course!