Buying my Girlfriend a Mac laptop

[~TheProxy~]

Hi all, i was looking at possible valentines/birthday presents for my girlfriend,

started looking at emacs because they are cheap yet still capable, i found that i would be paying too much to warrent a 700ghz machine that would possibly need a bigger hdd airport card and so on,

any ways i went searching for laptops instead as she is going on a cruise soon and this will be a great way to keep in touch,

i found an iBook G4, my experience with mac laptops is only limited to the macbook i now own, and was wondering what the forums opinion was on what to buy,

i'm looking for nothing over $200 (i know cheap, but i'm broke at the moment) of course it's to be second hand, and nothing really uner 1Ghz processor speed,

she mainly does normal internet stuff like facebook hotmail and so on,

she would probably like to use her old ipod shuffle on there aswell,

are you able to upgrade ram or the hdd in an ibook? is there airport reliable? is the old mac os reliable?

any info would be appreciated

thanks

-AJ

 

[deus_ex_machina]

iBooks are definitely upgradeable. Go to Low End Mac: Worth It! and find your iBook G4's profile. It'll tell you all you'll need to know.

 

[chas_m]

I hate to add this, but as someone who cruises periodically I have to tell you that the odds of your girlfriend having wireless internet on her cruise is practically nil unless she suddenly becomes very, VERY rich.

PS. If at all possible, aim for a 1GHz iBook or higher. These machines are already much disadvantaged by the years of changing technology since they came out; anything under 1GHz is going to feel awfully slow out on the net.

 

[~TheProxy~]

i was told that her mother was taking her fathers laptop to use via the available wireless, so i guess there's wireless,

are they slow because of things like bus speed and cache sizes? i know sometimes if you look purely at ram and cpu specs things aren't always slower or faster,

for example my macbook is far quicker than my sisters 3ghz dual core pc,

mind you my girlfriend is easy to please would be more than over the moon with an ibook, i was just thinking about reliability and known bugs/problems

 

[pigoo3]

I hate to add this, but as someone who cruises periodically I have to tell you that the odds of your girlfriend having wireless internet on her cruise is practically nil unless she suddenly becomes very, VERY rich.

I'm not familiar with wireless internet availability on cruise ships...what's the deal with the price...is wireless internet not included with the price of the cruise?...and if not...do they charge a really expensive/hour rate?

Thanks,

- Nick