ibook or powerbook?????

Let me start by saying I am a former mac user who went to windows. I had a 14in ibook g4 and stupidly sold it so I could get a windows pc and be compatible with the wife's gateway. Well I have regretted it ever since and am coming back to mac, and hopefully going to convert the wife. Here is my dilema. I am looking at purchasing this thing Jan 2, 2005. Budget is an issue, but overall, I would rather spend a little more and be happy than spend less and regret it. but if I dont need to spend the extra cash than obviously I would rather not. So I am looking at the g4 ibook or the powerbook. First, should I wait a while for the g5's? I know its the new year and I would hate to buy one just to have a price drop or a new model come out right after i buy it. Now, should I get the ibook or the powerbook? I loved my ibook, is the powerbook really that much more pwoerful? Will I really notice a difference? I do lots of online surfing, some home movies, website design, a little gaming, lots of family photo work, which brings upo the question does anyone know of any good photo editing programs? I love the backlit keyboard option on the powerbook, and that aluminum case is sexy as ****. I dont need a superdrive, I will be using the bluetooth, and to my understanding the bluetooth is standard on the powerbook. So my question comes down to: For a moderate family user, which should I go for, the ibook or powerbook?

Well, I faced the same questions myself awhile ago. Are you looking for a larger laptop? ibooks only come in 12" and 14" models. Powerbooks are availible in 12", 15", or 17" models. The main differences I noticed, in comparing the 12" ibook to the 12" powerbook were...

ibook/ powerbook
1.2ghz G4/ 1.33ghz G4
DDR 266 ram/ DDR 333 ram
30gig HD/ 60gig HD
32mb vid card/ 64mb vid card
$999/ $1599

Now those differences to me, and I too am on a budget, were not nearly worth paying $600 more, and thats for the 12" which has no illuminated keys. You'd have to really fork out the cash to get a 15" or 17" model. The ibook G4 is a great deal, and G5 notebooks are very far away, definetely availible on the powerbook first, and they prob will cost about 10 car payments. Get the ibook G4 now and enjoy it, youd save money, and be able to buy your wifey one too. Hope this helps.

Powerbook if:
* You want to do fairly CPU-intensive things (they have a faster motherboard etc)
* You want to play a game that would benefit from the better 3D card (e.g. Second Life) (Note neither are really good for games, but if like me you want to log into a 3D online world in a place that's comfortable...)
* You want to be able to run it with an external monitor at a high resolution when you're at your desk and/or have an extended desktop across the screens (iBooks only allow you to mirror what's already on your LCD screen and at the same resolution e.g. 1024x768)
* You really prefer the metal case

Otherwise, go iBook IMO. The high resolution external monitor support was the seller for me (I'm running off an iiyama vision master at 1600x1200 at this moment in time on a 12" Powerbook, watching the progress of a download on the LCD portion of the desktop) closely followed by the ability to run Second Life which is a big hobby for me. YMMV.