ibook or powerbook?

Hi guys.

I am looking to buy some kind of portable Mac in the next few months, so am after a bit of advice here.

I work as a web developer, primarily on front-end code, user-interface stuff, but not much graphics.

Although I will not initially be using the Mac at work (can't afford to be learning a new OS in that environment!), I may eventually want to hook it up to a second larger monitor, and use it as my primary machine.

Which machine (ibook/powerbook) sounds more appropriate to you? Cost is not immaterial (of course) but I am willing to spend as much as required for a machine that will 'do the business'.

I think my basic question is, will I see a significantly improved performance from the PowerBook when running lots of apps together (calendar, email, 4/5 browser windows, bbedit, IM, etc...) or is the ibook more than sufficient for this (with 520MD memory of course)? What is essentially the difference between the two machines?

Bear in mind, I'm not doing much (if any) graphics/video work. And no games.

Hope I'm being clear. If not, feel free to ask any follow ups (if you have a few minutes spare).

Thanks guys.

Andy.

it sounds to me that an iBook would do. what kind of applications do you use for making webpages? i have a 12" iBook and i write all my simple code and have 2 or 3 browser windows open, mail, Yahoo instant messenger and 2 or 3 finder windows and it does fine. i also do a little photoshop, mainly cropping and resizing, and i opend 20 40k images yesterday at the same time and i didnt take very long. the screen is a little small. i dont know about the other iBooks, but the max resolution on mine is 1024x768. that is all the external monitor will display too.

I wouldn't want to do a great deal of work using a screen that only supports 1024x768. Either will have enough power to do the things you want to do though.

Thanks guys, useful stuff. And good point about these notebooks only supporting up to 1024 x 768 res. Could be nasty on a larger screen.

The lowest spec machine which supports 1280 x 854 is the 15" 1.5GHz Powerbook, so quite a price bump - in fact nearly twice as much as the 12" ibook!

Is it worth buying a 7200 rpm external hard drive - what are the HD speeds in the ibook?

I'm leaning toward the ibook however, maybe sort something else out for work, when the time and need arises.

Cheers.

The iBook only supports 1024x768. All PowerBooks (including the 12" PB) support up to 1600x1200 for the external monitor. Higher resolutions are available on the 17" PB and the 15" with 128MB of RAM.

For your usage patterns the HD is fine (5400 RPM as I recall). If you need more space later though a 7200 RPM FW drive would not be a bad choice.

The performance difference between the iBook and PB is noticable but the iBook should be fine for the kind of use you are describing.

...

I'm a Java developer, so I do some web development.

I have a 15" PowerBook G4 1.5 with 1 gig RAM and I can run a ton of development stuff smoothly. That includes: an IDE, a web-dev tool (like DreamWeaver), Safari/FireFox/IE, a version control system...

The 5400RPM HD seems like a non-issue to me. Everything is pretty snappy.

My friend has the 12" PowerBook, and I have to say that I really would not want to develop web-apps on it. It's great for what it is, but the 15" screen is about as small as I would want to go.

Anyone have any idea about whether it is worth waiting for a possible ibook update. It has been a while since one right?

Anyone have any news?

You can look at Mac Rumor's Buyers Guide.

Well, if you have the money, then get the Powerbook. If not, then an iBook with upgrades will be enough for almost anything.