Buying help

Dear All, I need help.

I am a 25 year old British guy living in Japan and I want to buy a computer. I haven't owned a computer for donkey's years but I have been using Windows PCs for the last six or seven years at school, uni and work to write reports and browse the internet. Educated friends have made reasonable arguments as to why I should stick to my affiliation with Windows when I spend all my hard earned pennies on a computer as I am about to do. Nevertheless, I have a strange and perhaps irrational urge to join your clan. Hence I am here asking you to help me end my dilemna.

My needs are simple. Primarily, I want to get access to the web that I can control. I want to be able to download movies and TV content that isn't readily available in Japan. Once I've downloaded it, I want to be able to store or record it so that I can watch it again. This goes the same for music files that I can share with my friends and a get on to CD/MD. Photos too. Editing and sending them I mean. My future also has medeveloping my own website via very user friendly software. There must and shall be "civilisation"-esque games too. Portability is important, but not the everyday kind. I'm likely to move country in the next year so some kind of worldwide support is a must. I don't mind spending cash but I'd be upset if I spent $3000 toady and it was old hat in 6 months time (read: I've read the rumors about G5Powerbooks).

I'll be very interested to hear what you have to say...

Mowgli.xx

mowgli said:

My needs are simple. Primarily, I want to get access to the web that I can control. I want to be able to download movies and TV content that isn't readily available in Japan. Once I've downloaded it, I want to be able to store or record it so that I can watch it again. This goes the same for music files that I can share with my friends and a get on to CD/MD. Photos too. Editing and sending them I mean. My future also has medeveloping my own website via very user friendly software. There must and shall be "civilisation"-esque games too. Portability is important, but not the everyday kind. I'm likely to move country in the next year so some kind of worldwide support is a must. I don't mind spending cash but I'd be upset if I spent $3000 toady and it was old hat in 6 months time (read: I've read the rumors about G5Powerbooks).

Click to expand...

Access to the web: Safari is an awesome browser with popup blocking and tabs.
Music/Movies: Powerbooks come standard with a Combo drive for burning CD's, and the software is drag-and-drop.
Photos: iPhoto. 'nuff said.
Website:
Civilization-type games: you picked one of Mac's strongest genres. Strategy games abound. (Yes, I believe Civilization 1-3 are also available for Mac.
Portability: Mac OS X is probably the most portable OS, with Unicode built in, and a number of languages built-in as well.

You practically did a Switch commercial, mowgli.

Thanks, for that.

What I'm wondering now is that the biggest difference between the ibook and powerbook is the ability to burn DVDs on the latter...and I've heard stories that the burning takes forever on the Powerbook's drive, so does it make sense to go for an ibook and buy an external DVD-R?

What other advantages does the Powerbook have over the ibook when it comes to movies, music files, photos and general multi media applications? The most hardcore thing I'm likely to do is to combine images and sound and then post the result on the web?

Cheers.

I think pretty much any mac you buy will help you infringe on all those copyrite laws.