| Product: |
Apple iBook G4 |
| Date: |
05.05.08 (15 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: All round great features, looks, and performance.
Disadvantages: A little pricier than other laptops - but worth it.
I bought my G4 iBook almost 4 years ago and it is still going strong. That says something about the build of the machine, it's durability and usability. In that whole time I have only ever had one real problem with the machine, and that was when iTunes decided to crash. All it meant was that I had to restore my music collection by copying it back into iTunes from the hard drive music library. Sure, not exactly a fun thing to do but definitely nowhere near the problems that I've had with PCs in the past.
I have only ever caught one virus, and even now I'm not actually sure it was a virus, given how rare Mac viruses are. Basically it just meant that my video streaming online was running slow and I had to reinstall the operating system. Again, not a big deal and it was good to update the system anyway.
So, what's the computer like to use? Well, in a word, easy. Of course, coming from a PC, you at first wonder how it works and what to do. But the thing you quickly realise with Macs is that whatever seems like the most intuitive way to operate a program, is probably the right way to do so. Think you should just be able to drag and drop things instead of copying them from one program to another? You can. It really couldn't be simpler.
The computer came with a basic but very good package of software and I have never had to buy any new software for my laptop. It came with iTunes (for storing and playing music), iPhoto (for storing, viewing and displaying all your digital photos), GarageBand (for making music, which I don't really use so can't comment on), iDVD (for editing and recording DVDs - again, not something I've used), Safari is the inbuilt internet browser, but you can easily download Firefox - which I recommend using as it is much faster and better, Appleworks is the word processing program and operates very similar to Word but is perhaps a bit more stripped back, you also get a bunch of other nice-to-have but inessential programs like calendar and address management programs, Chess games and a couple of others and so on.
It can record and play both CDs and DVDs and has 2 USB ports, an itnernet connection port, headphone output, and of course comes with a power adapter. Setting it up was so easy - I didnt' have to do anything, it was all ready to go as soon as I took it out of the box! Plus the battery performs really well. Even after 4 years I can still get through a whole movie without the battery going dead. Even longer if I am using a less battery-sapping application like just playing music.
My Mac looks beautiful, runs beautifully, is fast and sleek and has an excellent screen resolution. Of course it isn't the newest on the block anymore but I am still very impressed with how well it holds up - especially when I think that most of my friends who have PCs have to replace their computers after 3 years or so. I think I'll still have my Mac for another 3 years or so!
Summary: I'll never go back to PCs again.
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