Buying a Mac Laptop

Q. I have decided to purchase a laptop for when we travel, because I now need to access the computer while we are traveling on a daily basis. This daily access became necessary due to some changes in our vendor’s computer equipment. Therefore, I am in the process of trying to decide what laptop from Apple to purchase. I have 2 iMacs now and don’t want an IBM compatible. However, if any of you know some good deals and tips on purchasing either the iBook or PowerBook please let me know. –

A. Well of course you WANT the Titanium i-Book, but this is a frugality site… Seriously, everything I’ve read points to airport compatibility (for all your machines would be best) being the road to travel now. Apparently much of the future technology coming down the pike is heading wireless, including instantly-updatable and automatic synching PDAs. I will now quit mixing metaphors and let you get back to work :) – Gette

A. Randal, I’ve had my iBook for a year now. It does everything I wanted in a laptop. Mine is the top model with 128 mgs of built in memory. It plays CDs and DVDs and burns CDs. The only trouble I had was when I tried to switch from OS 9 to OS 10 (both were on the computer). OS 10 didn’t work right and I couldn’t get back to 9. Got that fixed and haven’t tried 10 again. I’m using OS 9.1 now. As I understand it, OS 10 won’t open documents from earlier systems. The idea is that you could toggle between the 2 systems, but that didn’t work for me! I take mine whenever we’re traveling. It weighs less than 5 pounds. And use it at home too, because my husband is usually on the Mac G3. :-) I enjoy Frugal Life. Keep up the good work! – Alice