I am in the market for a new portable and being a student I am really drawn to the iBook mainly for portability, good battery life and price. I will be using it for basic applications word processing, web surfing and a dabble in video editing via iMovie. My needs aren't pro, they are very basic.

I think the powerbook line is a much better option for your needs, considering the screen real-estate of a 15" and the HDD speeds you can get. If you want to save money, why not go the 12" powerbook? It has the same screen resolution as the 14" iBook and you can get a superdrive equipped.

My mate put a 7200rpm hitachi drive in his ibook, and he said it rocks. Cost him $80 to get reseller to install it (plus the cost of the drive from another supplier).

Disko: thanks.... do you have a portfolio of cool stuff you have designed which I can check out? thanks.

Downsys: To check the speed of your HD (which I strongly suspect is 4200RPM) click the Apple menu in top left corner of your screen, and select "About this mac" then "more info." Choose the "ATA" heading from the Hardware section, and get the model number of the Hard-disk.

Google this model number: in my case it is TOSHIBA MK8026GAX. This will give you a list of sellers of said HD which will tell you the speed.

Thanks Ozi! got mine : FUJITSU MHT2060AT and it's 4200rpm with 60gb space...hmm, this is interesting...if i could boost the performance of the harddrive and later upgrade the ram, this would be better than a PB i so long...hehehe...thanks for the info guys...

to the topic starter, i couldn't find enough greatness (for my own usage) of the PB to justify the price...being a student, this was all i could afford (well, i don't wanna exploit my parent's kindness do i) :P . this ibook has worked wonders for me though. remember back the days in 2000 when Apple's adverts were selling the line 'Is it possible to fall in love with a notebook?'. hell yeah it is!

Well, the 40Gb in my 'book is starting to get a bit tight... possibly looking at getting an 80gb 5400rpm drive.

Don't diss the 14"... I'm glad that I got it over the 12" :P

They should really switch over to 15" with the next full update (not the 6 monthly speed bump update).

Thanks for the advice appletalk admin and those who gave some advice

I haven't decided when I want to purchase them, because if I go for 15" pbook, my money is still a bit short :P heheheh, at this stage I would like to compare them first since the new ibook came out, which is worth a while to buy

coz i'll use the mac for about 4-5 years and also since this is the first time (buying and using mac computer, I hope when mac updated new machine, they will focus on their quality control)

I saw a lot of history on mac computers and seems that mac had quiet a lot problem occur and I'm a bit scare h34r:

Thank's guys
Haris