Ding dong, the iBook is DEADDEADDEAD

[danaeris]

Well, they just called. According to them, the logic board is fried. The part would cost $925 to replace and $45 labour. For almost a thousand dollars, I might as well buy a new laptop. If they're telling the truth. Which I'd like to believe; they struck me as real Mac geeks.

So, unless someone presents a compelling argument for the Powerbook (which is lighter and smaller, but has a shorter battery life and less durable casing), I'm going for the 12" iBook again. Which leaves me with the following decisions:

1. (a) How much SDRAM is enough?
It comes with 512 MB.
Upgrade to:
768, $65 (although my old 128 card from the old laptop might serve for this)
1 G, $130
1.5 G, $390
(b) What about buying SDRAM for cheaper elsewhere and installing it myself -- will that void the warranty? Is non-Apple SDRAM particularly good or bad? Thanks to nathanw for this suggestion.

(2) How much hard disk space is enough?
It comes with 40 Gigs.
Upgrade to:
60 G, $65
80 G, $130
100 G, $260

(3) Do I want iWork? What the hell is iWork anyway?

(4) Do I want to spend the $389 to get AppleCare (a three year warranty)? This time, it would have covered things. Last time, when I had it, it wouldn't have. Argh, I say.

Comments

[geekosaur]

iWork is Keynote and Pages (Apple's Powerpoint and Word alternatives).

[danaeris.livejournal.com]

Sounds not-useful to me. Thanks for the explanation. I couldn't quite get past their marketing speak when I was reading about it on their website.

[night--watch.livejournal.com]

How long did you have the old one(s)? I've been considering the whole laptop thing, but negotiations with the pocketbook are still ongoing.

[danaeris.livejournal.com]

The first laptop lasted a little under two years before I spilled salt water on it and fried it. Because I had done the damage to it, AppleCare wouldn't cover it.

The second laptop (this one) was bought February 29, 2004, so it has just under two years on it as well. I did NOT get AppleCare on it because I thought it unlikely that the thing would die on its own rather than because of my own messups (which are not covered). Murphy's law that this time, it DID die in a way that would be covered.

[unseelie23.livejournal.com]

If you already own MS Office or use Star Office, you don't really need iWork. I'd go for a gig unless you really can't afford it. As for drive space, that depends on how much multimedia content (music, movies, etc.) you have and/or download. If the answer is 'none', 40gb is likely enough. What size was your old drive, and how full was it?

As for Applecare, you can buy it at any time up to 1 year after the purchase of the laptop. So, you don't have to decide today. However, considering the problems I've had with my last couple of laptops, the problems reported by anonymous users over the last couple of years and the problems you've had, I think it's a wise investment.

Sadly, Apple's machines don't seem to be as durable as they used to be... more and more hardware issues as they move to cheaper components. *sigh*

[danaeris.livejournal.com]

Well, the old drive was 30g and I think I had used up about 20g of it, although the stuff on there was inefficiently stored, with duplicate copies, old copies of stuff I didn't actually want to keep, etc. My iPod is a 40g, actually, which is funny -- I have more memory on my iPod than on my computer's hard disk!

[nathanjw]

(1) Don't buy memory from Apple; their prices are terrible and it's very easy to install. I like Coast Memory; they want US$59 for a 512M module (for a total of 1G) and US$149 for a 1G module (for a total of 1.5G). I would say that 512M is only just okay these days, but 1G total is quite comfortable.

(2) Disk space is trickier. How much space were you using on the old one? Do you have files you want to move off of other computers? Here, it's a bit better to spend money up front, because replacing the hard drive is *not* easy.

(3) I suspect you don't want iWork. Keynote is a Powerpoint replacement; it's supposed to be pretty good, if you want that kind of tool. Most people don't want that kind of tool at all, and you don't seem like you're in a slidehow-presentation kind of field. Pages is a kind-of wordprocessor, kind-of page layout program, and reportedly it isn't that great at either. It seems to be targeted at amateurs writing company/church/neighborhood newsletters, or something like that. For vanilla word processing, I find AppleWorks and/or Text Edit is okay (really plain text just gets emacs, of course). I don't know how you work your writing process, but if you've gotten by without Pages before, you won't miss it.

(4) AppleCare - this is tough. It's essentially insurance, and I think it's too expensive in the long run, but knowing that you're not going to have to shell out another $1000 after another year could be worth something. Check if any credit cards you have have a warranty-extension program. Most AmEx cards, for example, will double a manufacturer's warranty if you use it to buy the product, so AppleCare would only be buying you coverage between years 2 and 3.

[danaeris.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the suggestion on the memory. I wasn't aware of that as an option.

Re: the hard disk space, I've used about 20 of my 30 gigs on the old laptop. While more space would be nice (I was offered some movie content recently that I could not take because I didn't have enough space), I'm not sure whether I'd end up using it, especially since I suspect that I have a lot of crap on the old hard drive that I don't want or need.

Re: AppleCare... I had never heard of this credit card warranty thing. Interesting. I will check into it!

I just wanted to thank you for all your advice on this stuff. It's been really appreciated.

[nathanjw]

Sure thing. I feel like I'm in a good position to relay advice on this since I'd spent about the last year thinking "should I replace my laptop now? with what? Okay, how about now?" and finally went and did it in August (G4 iBook 1.25GHz 12", 100G disk, 1.5G memory, for the record). My old G3 iBook still works, though it's feeling unloved these days...

[thespian.livejournal.com]

what I find most amusing is, as you were posting this, I was posting almost exactly the same thing/opinions (see below, though I got distracted in the middle of it) :-)

Good to know my opinions are maybe more than just mine :-)

[thespian.livejournal.com]

I found Applecare was a crock; they sell it to you, but there always seems to be a reason why your current case doesn't fall under Applecare, once they have your money.

I think the upgrade to 60 gigs should do you fine, if you do a lot of large files. most of your work seems to be in text, though; do you do enough in graphics, or download enough media (movies, mp3s) to really need 60GB? 3 or 4 days of music is still under 5GB, but I watch a lot of my tv by downloading these days, since it's handy. The proportionate cost of the 80 and 100GB increases seems high - though 80 is the same $65 cost for 20GB, I suspect you won't use it much. I have 60GB and it's pretty spacious.

you probably don't want iWork. it's an Office-alike, and if you're not going to have Office, there are better options (it's actually more like getting that 'Home Use' Office - basically you get Apple's versions of PowerPoint and Word). If they're selling it for their usual price (80ish?), skip it and get more hard drive space.

As to the memory, I'd say don't bother; use the stuff from the old iBook if you can, but otherwise, wait a while and see if you're having problems with it. Other manufacturers sell memory, and you will usually pay less buying it later. The iBook has the base 512 and an expansion slot. Do they upgrade the base 512, or do they just put another stick in the expansion? If it's the first, then go for it. If it's the second, you can expand the memory less expensively in the future.

[danaeris.livejournal.com]

HDS: What you're saying is very helpful. At the moment I don't download much, and don't need much memory; the 40 would probably be fine. But when I move into the city I might start watching more tv on my laptop, in which case having more would be useful, but how much more? Well, if you're doing a lot of that and you find 60 to be spacious, then I imagine it would be fine for me.

Memory: I'm pretty sure they actually just put another memory stick in the expansion, so I think I will follow your and nathanw's advice on that and NOT upgrade the memory to begin with, except perhaps to put in the module I already have.

[nathanjw]

Right, the machine comes with 512M and an empty slot; the upgrades are all just filling the slot.

Your memory from the old laptop won't work, though; it's the wrong kind (PC100 SDRAM in the old one, PC2100 DDR for the new one).

[thespian.livejournal.com]

right now, on my machine, I have:

4 episodes of Max Headroom
3 episodes of The West Wing
The TV Wheel (a special Joel Hodgson did for Comedy Central)
2 episodes of Bones
a bootleg taping of Rent
5 episodes of WKRP
the Robin Hood ads with the kids
The entire run of Aquaman dance party
and about 1200 mp3s.

this is in addition to all the regular stuff I have; writing, web dev, etc.

it's all using about half of one of my partitions (the drive is partitioned into 2 30GB drives; one for files, one for the OS and programs).

I think with 40GB, I'd be ok, but tight - the program drive has about 18GB filled, but that's because all my partial shareaza files are there, too. But with 60, I have breathing space (though the West Wing episodes are disappearing soon).

A typical one hour tv show takes about 350MB at usual compression rates; you'll see them larger, of course (the rip of the british Max Headroom movie is 700MB), so assume you can get about 3 shows to a gig. Unless you're planning on keeping them forever (I share the Max Headroom and TV Wheel often enough that I keep them on the machine), you're ok saying that maybe 5GB is 'tv space', allowing space for the partial downloads and shows you're going to watch.

[random-vamp.livejournal.com]

I found Applecare was a crock

Hmm, I've had the opposite experience. Admittedly, my problems were not ones easily linked to mis-use (logic board and power supply issues), but the $250 for AppleCare has saved me more than the cost of the laptop in repairs.

Also, I can't imagine it being as useful if I lived in an area that didn't have a convenient Apple Store in it. The ability to just take it to the counter to have them look at and diagnose the problems free of charge is incredibly convenient.

[phantomdancer.livejournal.com]

I'd probably go with 1G ram, and an 80 GB HD...