Older mac for high school

Hey guys, my cousin is going to high school prety soon and he's getting into a program where they require macs. He doesn't have a lot of money (obviously), lets say $1200 max but lesser the better. It needs to be a notebook, no iMacs or Mac minis. His exact question:

"Where can you find a fairly cheap iBook or PowerBook G4 with good specs?"

Exactly what are good specs if he wants to run OS X and apps (mostly iLife) comfortably.

He was looking at this: http://www.notebookreview.com/price...milyID=312&display=priceDetail&productID=9838

...but i want him to get the best deal he can.

Thanks.
Safer

 

Hey safer,

Thanx for the post and good luck on helping me out.

 

Students and faculity get special pricing from Apple's online & stores.

 

Get the mac mini or imac. I think it's unsafe (in my area at least) to bring a notebook to high school -- could be stolen and such....

 

if you cant find an older apple anywhere the $1100 macbook would be the only new apple. mabey ebay would have older ibooks or powerbooks.

 

I would buy a MacBook and skip the Powebook, iBook as they are from now on old technology.

 

I too concur on the MacBook. With the educational discount, it starts at $1049 with free shipping from the Apple store, AND you get a free iPod nano after rebate! It ends up costing the same as the G4 iBook in the end, has way better specs, and it's not going to become obsolete anytime soon. (And if he already has an MP3 player, or doesn't want one, he can always sell the iPod on Craigslist or eBay and get back some of that cash.)

HOWEVER, he should check with his school to find out if an Intel-based Mac is acceptable for this program. If, for example, the school is providing some software that it wants everyone to have, or something, it could be written for the PowerPC-based Macs, and there may be no choice but to get something dated. I guess, check to see if the school has minimum system requirements.

On an unrelated note, I think the G4 iBooks are the best looking Apple laptops to date

Malia

 

he is going into high school, meaning the college discount doesnt work (unless he was to simply click on the edicational discount icon and cheat the system) or get a relative in college to buy it for him.

I think a macbook would be a good choice for $1050 (with discount) it should last him all of highschool.

 

Many universities allow alumni to buy with the discount. I know mine does. If you know an alumnist of a school that allws this you won't be cheating the system anymore!

 

Educational discount works for K-12 as well. That's actually what I did to find out what the educational price of the MB is before posting. All you have to do is choose K-12 instead of higher ed on the first screen you get after clicking educational discount...

Malia

 

http://www.lowendmac.com/ibook/ideals.html

That's information on the ibook G4 and a list of deals from several vendors that have it.

 

You should have read K-12 terms a bit closer, it states you must be a either an administrative staff or faculty in order to use the educational discount, its not open to students of K-12.

It might be different for other schools but I doubt it.

 

Hmm, it seems as though the entry level macbook comes with iLife already! That would simplify things a great deal!

If he can't get the educational discount, i can purchase it on his behalf.

I wonder if he'll let me keep the free iPod since he already has one hehehe.

 

All macs come with a full version of iLife.