Do Apple iBooks Make Good Geek Laptops?

Curious Geek asks: "I'm in the market for a good, cheap laptop. Primarily I'm looking for something that is relatively rugged, has a LONG batter life, and that is *nix friendly. I'd primarily use it for Perl, PHP and Java coding either on client sites, in front of the TV, or on the train. It would also be nice if I could run dummy websites from it and let it take care of customer invoicing (again, this is all going to be Perl/PHP/Apache stuff) At the moment, the best bet looks like an apple iBook, it has a 5 hour battery life, ships with OS X (although I could use mac linux or YDL) and is rugged enough that loads of spotty yoofs have been given them at school. It also has the ability to house an internal wireless LAN card, which is pretty groovy. Can anybody recommend anything better? My price range is limited ~$1400 USD. I know that for that price I could get an X86 laptop - but do any of these have a battery life as good as the iBook?"

Comments

Laptop with 3 mouse buttons?

[crow]

Personally, I'm addicted to using three mouse buttons. The middle button opens links in new windows, pastes the copy buffer, and so forth.

Do any laptops come with three mouse buttons?

Are the Apple laptops stuck with only one button like their desktop mice?

Definitely recommended...

[ZxCv]

I've got the iBook 600 (384/20G/12.1/DVD-CDRW/Airport), and I would definitely recommended one of these for what you want. When I initially bought mine, I got it for mainly the same reasons: small and light, rugged, plenty of features. I was also interested in OS X, but not ready to commit--the fact that I could use Debian was the only thing that cinched the purchase for me. When I received it, I reformatted, installing Debian alongside OS 9 and OS X. For the first couple months or so, I used Linux quite a bit, but recently, I reformatted and went all OS X. This is because OS X is fast and stable enough now, and any software I ever used on Linux could be used, all in a much nicer GUI than Linux ever saw. Obviously, the iBook isn't for everyone, but your needs sound rather similar to mine, and I have been nothing but happy with my iBook in the 4 months or so that I've owned it.

I dont think these are in your price range, but...

[millisa]

Itronix GoBook Max

Field Pack

Both of these claim to have extreme battery life times and since they are marketed more towards military applications, they are pretty rugged. I mean, come on, check out Itronix's quote:
We have teamed with select systems integrators to enable you to deploy a solution right now for border security, first responder teams, bio-terrorism response teams, and network infrastructure.
. . .if that doesn't just scream gimmegimmegimme, I don't know what does. Your nation might *need* you while you are on that train. You could be ready.
The FieldPac looks pretty tough, too. . . think about it, you are on that train and some thug demands your money and you can reach down, pat the case and say "Don't make me use this . . ."

Seriously though, the app type stuff you mentioned could probably be done on most any semi-recent laptop (P2-233 would probably suffice) and most of the consumer laptops are going to have fluff (like *sound* who needs *that*?) that could dimish your battery run time (somewhat). If you really want long battery life, hunt around in the gear aimed towards outdoors work (again though, they are probably outside the 1400 buck price range).

My iBook Experience

[RevAaron]

A year ago, I sold my PowerMac G4/400 Tower to buy an iBook 500.

I love it. I can safely say that this is the most satisfying computer purchase I've ever made. Not that my other computers sucked, but it just rules.

Up until a month ago, I ran Mac OS X full-time. More and more, I've been using Squeak as my operating system rather than Mac OS X proper, with the exception of web-browsing which I do in OS X. I switched back to Linux so I could work on some aspects of Squeak more easily, and tie Squeak into my environment, long story. ;P

I'm a veteran Linux user, dumping it a couple years back to switch to Mac OS X. I've switched back, and am doing fine. Linux still sucks in many of the ways I remembered, especially in the area of GUI consistency compared to OS X. But then again, I spend a lot of my time in Squeak, not with regular X apps so it doesn't bother me much.

I installed Debian GNU/Linux 2.2r6 on this puppy and the install went as smoothly as any x86 Linux install I've ever done (and I've done more than my fair share). I was surprised to find that out. A while back, I tried to install NetBSD, and it was a pain in the rump, so I was expecting something similar for Debian. Piece of cake. Upgraded to Woody without any problems.

I can even close the lid and have the 'book go to sleep, just like in OS 9 and X. It doesn't wake up as lightning fast as OS X does, but eh, I expected worse!

This machine is fast and durable. Incidentally, that's what I wanted from a computer. I'm sure you can get faster iBooks and PowerBooks and maybe even a faster PC notebook, but this does what I need and them some.

Sound still doesn't work, to my knowledge. This is a bummer, but not a huge deal.

I have my right command and enter keys mapped to do the job of my other mouse buttons. No, it's not a pain in the ass. Quite natural. I have a USB mouse, but haven't felt any need to figure out how to get it working in X11 yet. XFree runs fast enough, some room for graphics speed up though.

Don't see the big deal aobut a PCMCIA slot. This baby has everything I need on board, which IMO is a helluva lot better than to have to futz with PC cards. USB to serial adaptor works like a charm with the Newton.

Aaron