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revolution
2006-10-29, 10:49
My girlfriends brother is offering her his old PowerBook for £600. It's a 1Ghz G4 with 768 mb Ram and 60GB hdd, also a brand new battery. It has iLife '06 and Office on it as well. I personally think its expensive, but just wondred if there were some more knowledgable people who had an idea.

According to currency convertor widget that equates to $1,138.08 whcih seems expensive to me!

Luca
2006-10-29, 11:12
I'm assuming it must be either a 15" or a 17". Still, that's too high. I spent $1000 several months ago for an open-box (good as new with full warranty) 12" 1.5 GHz one, so I'd say the price should be much lower. Granted, this one has a bigger screen, but mine is faster AND newer.

They're family members. He should be willing to sell it to her for a really good price. I'd say try for £400.

revolution
2006-10-29, 11:20
Thanks Luca, its a 12" sorry forgot to mention that. I thought £400-£500 seen as on the Higher Education store you can get a MacBook for £600ish.

Luca
2006-10-29, 11:39
Jeez, he wants that much for a 12"!? That's totally crazy, completely out of the question. £300 would be fair I think.

revolution
2006-10-29, 11:42
Lol! Your reaction actually made me laugh! Fair play, I will pass on the news!!

chucker
2006-10-29, 11:44
AFAICT, a new MacBook is £749, so why would you pick a used 12-inch PowerBook over that? Terrible deal, sorry.

You'd get:

1.83GHz Intel Core Duo
512MB memory
60GB hard drive
Combo drive

Same hard drive space. Slightly less RAM. Slightly weaker GPU in some areas (but stronger in others). No SuperDrive (not sure about that particular PowerBook; does it have one?). A much, much, much better CPU. That's two cores at 1.83 GHz each, compared to one with just 1 GHz. If you were to pull the strawman of comparing Megahertz to Megahertz, that's 1,000 vs. 3,667!

Not to mention all the snazzy extras, whether it's the built-in iSight, the MagSafe power connector, Front Row / the remote, the scrolling trackpad, etc.

All for £149 more. Oh, and did I mention it'd be new?

Koodari
2006-10-29, 12:05
I'd only buy that PB, even at £300, if I was short on cash and/or needed a typing/websurfing/coding laptop as a second machine. The Macbook is so much better, it isn't even funny.

The PB: used=no warranty, crappy screen (I know, I have a 12" iBook), no iSight, no scrolling trackpad, no MagSafe, no optical audio IO (not 100% sure about this), can't run Windows, and... hmm, what was that last thing? Oh yeah, FOUR TIMES SLOWER.

chucker
2006-10-29, 12:11
The PB: used=no warranty, crappy screen (I know, I have a 12" iBook)

Some 12-inch PowerBook models have better screens than their 12-inch iBook equivalents. That said, neither even come close to the MacBook's. Huge improvement.

revolution
2006-10-29, 13:22
Chucker: It does have a superdrive. I did say it was expensive and point out how much a new MacBook would be. I don't think she was expecting him to say that much, all she needs is to be able to wordprocess, surf the web and play music, which it would be very capable for.

I would love for her to buy a MacBook however price is an issue, as it is with what her bro has offered. I posted to find out what price would be reasonable for it. Which Luc supplied, but thanks for the feedback and thoughts, much appreciated!

Kraetos
2006-10-29, 13:54
My girlfriends brother is offering her his old PowerBook for £600. It's a 1Ghz G4 with 768 mb Ram and 60GB hdd, also a brand new battery. It has iLife '06 and Office on it as well. I personally think its expensive, but just wondred if there were some more knowledgable people who had an idea.

According to currency convertor widget that equates to $1,138.08 whcih seems expensive to me!

I have pretty much the same Mac, although mine is 15". I can also tell you my Mac is worth about $400, which is about £220. So there is no way that that Mac is worth more than £220.

Either way, you're talking about a 3-year old, underpowered laptop. If I were you, I would save some money and snag a refurbed MacBook. It sounds like you were ready to spend £600 anyway, right? Well thats probably a little less than a refurbed, baseline MacBook. Unless the superdrive is a must, a 1.83 MacBook would be a much, much, much better machine.

OTOH, if you're only willing to drop £200-300, then that might be the way to go.

turbulentfurball
2006-10-29, 17:54
Jeez, he wants that much for a 12"!? That's totally crazy, completely out of the question. £300 would be fair I think.

I saw a 266MHz G3 PowerBook for that (Well, £299 to be exact) in a second-user laptop store today. Seriously. :eek:

Dorian Gray
2006-11-01, 08:51
Converting US dollar prices of Macs to sterling is not useful. Macs (and computers in general) are much more expensive in the UK than in the US, so second-hand values are correspondingly greater. What's more, Apple's market share in the UK has increased tremendously in the last couple of years - more so than in the US - so second-hand demand has increased tremendously too, but two years ago the demand was much lower so there are not enough machines on the second-hand market to satisfy today's demand. In addition, Macs are very popular with university students, most of whom set off to uni loaded with their parents' money and don't shop around for cheap prices. The result is prices totally out of line with common sense.

The 12-inch PowerBook you're talking about has a 1 GHz G4 so it's very old, and vastly slower than the MacBook. Yet it would probably fetch £400 in any classifieds and £500 on eBay. Sadly I'm not joking: I've been looking for second-hand Apple notebooks and the prices are ridiculous. One can get a second-hand Core Duo Samsung/Dell/Toshiba with all the latest bling, a big hard disk and enough memory for the price of a totally outclassed two-year-old 12-inch PowerBook. Of course I'd rather have an old PowerBook than a horrid Samsung, regardless of performance! New Mac prices have come down to PC levels (for roughly equivalent performance, if not style and design), but second-hand Macs in the UK command a vast premium over their PC counterparts.