[H-GEN] Buying an Apple Powerbook...?????

[Greg Black]

On 2005-06-09, Gary Curtis wrote:

> I was two weeks away from buying a 12" Powerbook.  Then Steve Jobs
> dropped his bombshell about Intel.  What is the general consensus out
> there??   Do I keep my $$$ in my pocket for a while, hoping that Apple
> will drop the prices?  Or do I just go out and buy a regular Intel notebook
> as I was intending to run Debian most of the time anyway.

I think the Intel Apples are too far away to be a factor in any
decision; in any case, they will be expensive too and are not
likely to force down the prices of the current models.

I quite like my 12" Powerbook as a piece of kit, but I'd like it
a lot better if it ran something other than OSX and retained
full functionality.  So far, only OSX seems to make the hardware
work correctly.  OSX and Apple's management of it really suck.

Had I been able to find a similar sized notebook at a sensible
price that ran FreeBSD (for preference) or Debian (as a useful
fallback) at a competitive price, I would not have bought my
Powerbook (and I certainly won't buy another one).  I almost
bought an IBM as it came close on price with the employee
discount, but I decided to go with the Mac because it already
had a Unixy OS installed and was supported with that, unlike the
situation with the IBM.  With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, I
think I made the wrong decision.  I was also influenced by the
fact that several Humbuggers have iBooks and Powerbooks and most
of them seem happy with them.

> If it was your $3000, what would you do...?

Right now, if I had $3k for a laptop, I'd take a live CD (e.g.,
FreeSBIE, Knoppix, etc) to a vendor selling a $1k Asus box and
give it a test fly.  If it did the stuff I cared about, I'd buy
it and put the other $2k into a holiday or other wife-pleasing
activity.

Greg