Dave,
As part of my various efforts to garner income, I do Apple/Mac OS X
system administration and general support services. ;-)
I have been scrolling the Apple Canada web iste lately, and have a
few questions re the 14" iBook and the 15" Powerbook.
If i upgrade the 14" with 1g memeory the hard drive to 80g ,Super
Drive and add the 3 year extened warranty, its a bout the same
price as the 15" Powerbook,with out memory upgrades,plus or minus a
few $$'s.
Question is there much difference here.
(I would use it for travel, field storage of photos, PS editing and
printing and possibly for someone to look at a photo and accessing
the web.)
I see some difference in speed, 14" is 1.42 GHz with 512 K L2
[EMAIL PROTECTED](not sure what that is) with ATI Mobility RaDEON 9550,32M
ddr vIDEO.
The 15" Powerbook is 1.52 GhZ ,with no mention of the L2cache , and
same ati only its 9700 at 64m.
The primary difference between them to a user (other than the
difference in speed, screen form factor, style, etc... ;-) is the
fact that a PowerBook will operate the primary screen and an external
monitor as either one single, multi-segment desktop or in mirror
mode. The iBook will only operate an external monitor as a mirror of
the primary screen. Driving an external monitor is generally a matter
of simply having the correct connection dongle, whether it is for
SVGA or DVI, and configuring the display in the System Preferences
panel. Easy.
BTW, if you are going to be using an external monitor, keyboard and
mouse on your desktop anyway, you might consider the PowerBook 12"
instead of the 15" as it is much smaller and easier for mobility.
Also, for Photoshop, I recommend buying the system configured with as
large and fast a hard drive as possible as well as 512-768M RAM as a
minimum (I normally want 1G nowadays). Saves the hassle of doing it
later, you will want it anyway.
At home i would want to plug the CRT monitor i have into it and do
standard file downloads and PS edits.
I know i can get usb splitter so i can add card reader etc as it
looks like 2 usb and 1 firewall connection on the 14".
I recommend buying a self-powered, 7-port USB 2.0 hub. It is
invaluable to have more ports available when you need to plug
something in on an occasional basis, like mice, tablets, keyboards,
readers, printers, etc. You can similarly obtain a FireWire hub if
you find you need to add more devices that do not support pass-thru
connection.
Now do these units need an Apple extenal keyboard or as in the mini
mac, just use whats available.
Nearly any USB keyboard or mouse is compatible, whether they list Mac
OS or not. It is, of course, always a good idea to check and validate
that a specific one is actually compatible.
I cannot really tell from the web ad but i think there is MS Woks
2004 that come with it. I assume this is Xcell and word programs.
We use these at work, but in PC form.
I don't know about MS Works 2004 or the current bundle deals.
All you need to do is buy Microsoft Office X (latest version, of
course) and you'll have near 100% compatibility between your Excel
and Word documents on both platforms.
I use AcDc and Vueprint as my normal slide show programsand
thumbnail printouts.Any idea what can work on the Apples.
ACDSee is available in a Mac OS X version. I tried it and found it
somewhat lacking. iView MediaPro is what I recommend for its
functionality, see http://www.iview-multimedia.com for full details.
You need the Pro version if you want to be able to view RAW files.
I'm not sure what functionality Vueprint provides you, but it was
never available for Mac OS. I suspect that most of what you might be
using it for can be done with iView and the standard Mac OS X print
drivers, and Photoshop, anyway.
One last question. It comes with built in wireless with airport
express and bluetooth. What do i need extra if i want to web
wireledssly, any other devises. I'm clueless to wireless.
I saw the other messages in this thread.
Basically, you need an 802.11 base station/hub/router. I strongly
recommend the Apple Airport Base Station rather than the third party
alternatives, despite the higher price. The PowerBook or iBook both
come with the wireless cards and the Airport Administrator
application, which beats all the third party configuration/setup
utilities hands down for ease of use and learning. Buy the Airport
Base Station model that includes both ethernet and modem ports, not
the Airport Express, if you need to connect to dial up. If you don't
need the dial-up connection, the Airport Express is cheaper and does
pretty much the same job.
The schema is that you connect the base station to your WAN
connection, whether that be a phone line connection for dial up or a
DSL/cable modem for broadband connection. You run the Airport Admin
utility application and configure it for whatever your required
connection parameters are (there's an automated assistant for first
timers... ;-) and what level of security you want to do (ALWAYS turn
on 128bit WEP encryption). Then you load that configuration into the
base station and you're done.
Now any computer (Windows or Mac OS) can connect to the wireless
network you've established, given that you have given them the
password AND (if you've set up access control) if their MAC or
security address is installed in the base station configuration.
It's actually much simpler to do this than it sounds. Setting up a
small business network with base station and 50-10 Mac OS X systems
normally takes me about 20 minutes, max, if you're using the Airport
Base Station. Using a Netgear or Linksys base station has sometimes
taken 2-3 days of fussing over parameters to get working cleanly,
that's why I recommend the Apple Airport Base Station so strongly.
