A word of advice for the cordless optical mice, since I just had to tend to it: get some rechargeable batteries and a charger, because they go through 'em like they were being paid to. I have to change batteries at least once a month, more if I give in to Diablo 2, and it’d be expensive if I fed my mouse AA Duracells. Costco savings notwithstanding. 
If you’re considering a laptop, Apple just upgrade both the ibooks and powerbooks this morning.
Despite the glowing recommendations given here so far, I have to say that I recently switched to Mac and have been a little disappointed. I got all excited and boughtmyself a really cute little 900mhz iBook, along with a bit of extra RAM, and everything worked fine for a while. I loved iTunes, and I really loved being able to watch DVds in bed.
However, after only about three months of normal use, it just up and died on me. No power, no little LED’s, nothing. It didn’t even make a difference if it was plugged in or not, the damn thing just wouldn’t turn on no matter what I tried.
So after going through some of the obligatory phone-support stuff, Apple determined that it was a hardware problem, possibly with thte power management unit. As it was still under warranty, they sent me a box, I but the iBokk inside and sent it back. About ten days later, the iBook came back, and it worked, but almost EVERYTHING had been deleted off it, including iPhoto, iTunes, and all my music, pictures and documents.
I was a bit miffed, but I was glad to at least have it back and working again. but after a couple of weeks, it up and died on me again!
I was more than miffed this time - I was furious! I called Apple back and told them that the same damn problem had occurred again, even though the machine had supposedly been “fixed”. I asked that they either replaced it with a new one or gave me my money back, but the Customer Services guy on the phone wasn’t having any of it. He said that all I was entitled to was another repair, and if the machine was repaired three times without sucess, then I might be entitled to another iBook.
So to cut a long story short, I was expecting a lot out of Apple. Even though I love their machines when they work, I really feel like I’ve been burned now, and would hesitate to buy anything from them again. It’s such a shame…
Hopefully this isn’t a common occurance!
True story: My sister has an iBook, I have a TiBook. Our dad is a PC user. We’re at Dad’s for Yule two years ago (Dad wondering all the while where he went wrong, that his daughters are Mac users), and my sis needs to print out a hard copy of her plane reservation home. She asks if she can use Dad’s printer.
“Sure!” he says. “Rather you could, but I don’t have drivers for your Mac.” “Not to worry,” sez me, “it’s a Mac. We won’t need drivers.”
And we didn’t. Plugged in the USB cable, looked for a printer, and there it was. And poor Dad is still trying to figure out how we (me, a *nix hack, my sis is a capital-A-artist) both landed on Macs…
As multiple have said: no muss, no fuss, no bother.
Ahunter:
AOL Keyword: Open Mail Access has the details. Here’s a quote from their help section:
That’s cool. I just used Eudora to fetch my AOL email. Heh heh. Too bad they didn’t make this possible about…oh, say, a decade ago.
I own a G4 PowerBook and a own-build PC…
The Mac gets used for EVERYTHING!! I use it professonally (audio, video, animation, graphics and DVD authoring) It’s stable, it’s reliable, it doesn’t freak out if you so much as breathe coffee over it, the software that you can get for it is mostly excellent and it’s just the BEST thing I have ever bought!!
The PC gets used for “other stuff”… only I can’t think of anything at the mo…
hugs her Mac
Sorry you had to have that experience, Bibliovore. I think you learned the hard way that it’s probably a good idea to backup your data before shipping your computer off to be fixed. Take heart, though, that problems such as yours happen pretty infrequently with Macs, and seldom seem to affect an entire product line. I think chances are very, very good that the next Mac you own will be problem-free.
Well I’ve shipped my iBook off for it’s second repair now, so I hope they manage to get the problem sorted once and for all. I know that Macs are pretty reliable and simple to use (that’s why I switched in the first place), but it’s a shame my first
experience with them had to be so problematic.
Having said that, I’d love to own one of the new iMacs, they’re just so damn sexy. Coupled with a bank of external hard drives (say about 500 GB or so), and some really nice speakers, I could be quite satisfied.
In a related vein, Apple has extended their iBook logic board repair program.
I hear you. Hope thing work out, Bib.
BTW, the aforementioned GraphicConverter comes with the G5 and PowerBooks. You’ll have to obtain it elsewhere if you get an eMac or iBook.