Originally posted by: human2k
GOD, I absolutely love the apple TI books, too bad poor people like me cant afford macs . Maybe one day apple will switch to x86 and make their prices a bit more realistic.
That is not the issue. Even if it were; such a "solution" would yield only heavier, hotter, more power-consuming machines, requiring more ventilation, and therefore less appealing cases, leaving Apple in the same position as the PC vendors.
(I'm from the MacNN forum, linked above, btw - somebody linked to this thread over there).
The Apple laptops are superb. Laptop wise, I've got a 600 MHz iBook and a 1.2GHz P3 Dell machine; both of those are going, and will be replaced by a PC tower (A7N8X, unless I wait for the Opterons), and either a 12" PowerBook (revision B - as a rule, I never buy Rev. A), or a 15" once the machine gets updated.
The difference between the iBook and the Dell is astonishing. I love both machines, don't get me wrong; but the iBook is so much more polished. No portrusions at all; no surfaces to catch on anything, no unconformities in the finish, and everything sitting perfectly flush. The Dell is a much different story, and even has a fan on the bottom.
The iBook has a silent fan (yes, literally, silent - you wouldn't know it had one unless you took one apart - oh, and if anyone wants to see pics of the iBook taken apart, completely, just ask - had to do that a few weeks ago to a couple of machines. I'll do the same as soon as I get the 12"/15" too), and that's it. You wouldn't even know it had one. The only noise comes from the hard drive.
As for OSX, well - I'm still adjusting. It's amazing, don't get me wrong; but nowhere near as polished and refined as OS9 was, GUI wise. That said, it's a completely different beast, and I'm not comparing the two, so let's not get off topic.
The original poster mentioned video editing; I do a fair bit of that myself. The 17" comes with FireWire 800 as well as standard 6-pin powered FireWire (400), which may be relevant in the future, for vid editing. Either way - Final Cut Pro 3 is the most brilliant piece of software, ever. It blows every other video editing suite out of the water.
FCP3 + AE5 == incredible.
You won't regret the purchase, but I *really* suggest you play with a 17" for a while - you need to realise how huge it is.