[thelist] iBooks, OS X, Macs, Web Development, Laptops, Etc, Etc

[Jonathan_A_McPherson at rl.gov]

Thanks for all your comments, folks -- appreciated, muchly. As I'm a
soon-to-be Poor Starving College Student, I spend a lot of time agonizing
over major purchases, and it helps to have feedback.

I guess there's something about running Linux on the iBook that appeals to
me, just because almost no one does it. Most the kernel modifications to
Linux that let it run well on Apple hardware are done by one guy (famous as
BenH). But really, do I want to become a kernel hacker? Hmmm... probably
not. (-:

And I really despise the Microsoft Tax; the idea of getting a completely
Windows-free machine that still lets me run mass-market commercial software
(etc) is quite attractive, especially if it means not having to use my
limited personal funds to finance the Microsoft Machine.

But *sigh* based on y'all's comments, I don't think I can convince myself
that the iBook is worth the premium cost of the hardware, although I might
hang around and see if Apple introduces anything screamingly cool in July's
MacWorld (thanks, Chris).

What I'll most likely do is get a Dell 4100 or 8200 with WinXP Pro, install
Linux on it (dual-boot so I can test for those 92% Windows users), and run
all my dev tools under Linux -- Apache, PHP, Postgres or MySQL, vim,
Mozilla, etc. Dells are a lot more expensive (20%, according to Arlen, which
seems right on) than their counterparts, but they also have a good
reputation for reliability and are built using high-quality name-brand parts
that work with Linux out of the box (http://www.linux-laptop.net/). That, to
me, is worth the extra expense.

(I've noticed some HP laptops *very* attractively priced lately; if I can
find one of those that works well with Linux -- decent video chipset w/
dedicated RAM, modem, *integrated* 802.11b, etc -- I might pick it up
instead.)

--
Jonathan McPherson, LMIT/SD&I
Software Engineer & Web Systems Analyst
email / jonathan_a_mcpherson at rl dot gov