I believe the best point not yet raised is the resale value of the laptop. If you upgrade in a timely fashion every year or so you'll have an upgrade that almost pays for itself.

Chances are the tpg one will be worth jack squat in a year or so and the ibook will still reach a pretty penny on ebay. That is if you take good care of it.

I'm probably coming from a similar situation to the parent poster - I am slightly tempted by the tpg notebook, but at the low end I'd probably go with the ibook (do some research though to make sure that you avoid trouble models - e.g. pips g3 ibook saga).

I'd get a cheap, high spec PC to do all your burning, grunty stuff (games, etc) and the ibook for on-the-road type portable stuff.

The higher end centrino type laptops are a slightly different matter - I'd almost prefer them over the higher mac laptops.. but it really depends on the budget.

I would say that the biggest advantage of the iBook is OS X. I mean really you don't know how bad windows is until you've tried macintosh.
It's essentially the software side of apple's business that drives it's hardware sales. If you really really absolutely rely on windows (like there's a windows app that doesn't have a mac equivalent that you use), then a dell laptop would fit your needs. If not, then the ibook would be the best.
With the G4 they are a lot quicker. Updating the hard drive, ram etc.. would get you better performance and would also add more life to it. The absence of an audio-in port can easily be fixed through purchasing a Griffin iMic, usually around $100 or so.

But really, you can't go wrong with os x, stability wise its unequalled, its intuitive, simple and powerful. Software looks and feels better (sounds far fetched but compare office for mac with office for windows and you'll know what I mean). It might be hard to believe, but things are much much better on a macintosh. Also, no spyware, no virus', and no problems with a stupidly designed registry. Take the plunge and you'll know what I'm saying.

hmmm....

I'm a wintel owner, switching soon. But to answer your question "An objective view on iBook vs Cheap AMD laptop", the iBook is technologically superior to the AMD lappy.

1. The CPU. the G4 architecture is much better, depsite the clock deficiency, than the latest P4. Example, if a G4 clocked at 3Ghz was directly compared to a P4 Prescott 3Ghz, it would bring a tear to my eye to see a G4 clocked at that speed and see it perform so many more calculations than the P4.

2. The graphics card. Sure, the iBook only has a Radeon 9200 32MB but its much better than anything than SiS can produce. Volari anyone? LOL

3. Software. You get windows, its like buying a present for someone with nothing in the box. You get Mac OS X, you get 5 full boxes. You get iLife, Applework, Xcode, WorldBook, a few games and loads and loads of good stuff.

Unless your a business, Apple computers are expensive. But you buy a wintel box and you buy stress. I hate having my firewall pop-up 5 minutes telling me it stopped some stuipid thing, or my virus scanner telling me I got a virus. Even after SP2 was installed on this system it messed around with my other proggies I had running and basicly, windows is big pile of shit that causes life treatning stress. With my very limited experience, Mac OS X is like that for the first week. more or less because you have no idea where everything is, or what its principals are. After which its like going on holiday, not a single can really bother you. In escence, Macs give you a higher quility of life.

my 2 cents

Yikes, wouldnt touch the Sempron laptop with a barge poll!

The Athlon 64 laptop doesnt seem too bad, but it uses intergrated graphics (which means some of your system memory would be shared to it), and your only PCMCIA slot is taken by the wifi card :huh: . I dont know how the build quality would be like either.

Also Windows Xp-64bit edition wont be out for a few more months either, and from the release canidate version I've been testing, it is very lackluster to say the least.

The iBook at the moment is okay value for money, but only because of OSX and software. The G4 chip it self is getting long in the tooth and needs to be replaced (I mean 167mhz bus?)

All in all though I would go with the iBook simply because you dont have to use Windows, and be trapped in a virus ridden, spyware infested world.

If you wanted to tinker with things a bit you could always go the Athlon64 laptop and use a 64bit Linux distro like Fedora or SuSE B)

I wouldn't want to lug that thing around too often.
Look at it. It has no culture in it. It's just a box, with parts put inside for the lowest possible price. The wi-fi card isn't even integrated damn it.

The iBook however, it has effort put into it, it feels like someone gave a shit when they were making it and it shows when you are using it.

Price is a mute point, $1525 = $150 for 512MB of RAM makes the total price $1675.
The price of the Athlon 64 notebook is $1598 + $99 delivery, which makes it more expensive than the iBook *after* you've added the RAM.

I'd also hazard a guess to say that the iBook has longer battery life (I get 4 hours out of mine), is lighter and is generally all round better in every area perhaps in raw CPU speed than the AMD laptop.

You know you want an iBook.

The thing people miss when looking at specs is, what is the quality of the architechture in the machine? Sure it's got a fast processor, big HD etc, but all that is useless if the logic board and controllers are the cheapest and dogiest possible.

Someone pointed out on this forum (not sure exactly where) that firewire, say, in a PC laptop was very slow, whereas you'll always get proper speeds (depending how fast the HD is obviously) even in the cheapest iBook.

My experience with cheap PC gear is that it runs Windows very unreliably. Even where custom drivers have been designed for the parts, they often make Windows less stable. The difference I've experienced is huge - an IBM Netvista Celery 466 I had once was rock solid. A cheap arse Packard Bell 1Ghz machine was a shocker, seeming to run slower and less reliably than the IBM.

The other important thing is, in, say, 3 years time, the iBook will still be usable and working, and if something breaks, you'll be able to get parts for 7 years from Apple, not to mention being able to get another iBook and swap parts if it's more than a few years down the track. Good luck getting ANY parts for a Dell after 12 months. Each laptop they produce is different from every other, and they don't keep the required 7 years of parts inventory as Apple do.

Wow. I never knew Apple kept 7 years pf parts available. That's pretty amazing.

iBook it is.

I've briefly used OSX on my girlfriends crappy iMac G3.. I like it but the machine lacked balls for anything..

iBook will be a different story.

Bring it on.

Shame i can't get an EDU discount.

Sure you can. Do you have any friends who are students?

Also, keep us up to date with your experiences. I hope it serves you well.

The build quality of the lower end laptops from the big boys (Dell, IBM, Toshiba) don't seem to be up to the standards of Apple. The higher end centrino's are probably a different story however.

As stated before, the main benefits of getting an iBook over a similarly priced PC notebook is mainly due to OS X. I got a 933MHz G4 iBook, 640Mb RAM, Airport Extreme for the same price I could've gotten a 1.4GHz centrino notebook. OS X runs great.

I Just bought a new ibook 12" and "love" it. Coming from an Athlon 64 shuttle pc, then to a G4 933 Powermac, and now to the ibook. All I can say is I really dislike using the pc now. After a few months of using xp it slows down, begins to do weird things, I have to regularily check for viruses, spyware......man I hate using it now except for games.

But the ibook, wow what a joy to use, its awesome having wifi in the house, its light you can cart it anywhere, use it in the car, wardriv..... oh and the screen is great, I dont miss a big screen. I definately had to add another 512 meg ram and might consider replacing the 30 gig disk in the future. But after using, fixing, virus and spyware removing pc laptops at work I'm sick of them. My ibook just works 8-)

You wont be disaponted with the ibook!

A friend of mine bought that same spec AMD at around the same time as I bought my new iBook G4 (around 4 weeks ago).

His has been in and out of the repairs for various reasons. (3 times).

I can tell you with regard to speed. We both use Corel Painter and my iBook is notably faster. :lol:

Oh and regarding the wireless card cracking in the slot if you're not careful, that was the first thing to be replaced in my friend's AMD.

Just thought you'd like to know.

Yeah I'm gonna get an iBook.
768MB RAM.
Maybe a bigger HDD - otherwise I can get an Ipod and use it as an external HDD.
I don't have 20GB of mp3's..

Will let you know how it all goes when I eventually do it.
Finance might have to be the go.

Another thought - as the G4 has been superceded in the desktops, is this likely to shuffle into the Apple laptops soon? Also the new MAC OS due out soon (I think?) Taking both of these into consideration, is it worth holding off a little while. I am not in a hurry. I can wait 6 months if I want to.

oh and thanks for all the feedback!

It will be another 6-7months before we see a G5 chip in a laptop I think.

Food for thought though, the current iBooks graphics card (radeon 9200) isnt supported for the "core graphics" feature in the next release of OSX (10.4), pretty weak if you ask me :P