iMac or PowerBook or other?
James B Gordon
The iMac is not a portable computer, so I will presume you meant iBook.
My opinion is the easy winner is the PowerBook. The PowerBook's larger
viewing area will make a world of difference when viewing those Excel
spreadsheets. Plus he can pop in a DVD movie to keep him company on his
travels. They play fantastically on a PowerBook.
You'll need to buy Microsoft Office 98 (you qualify for the upgrade package)
regardless of whether you choose iBook or PowerBook Excel 5 will not run in
System 9, and that's what you're going to get on any of the new computers.
In late spring or early summer you'll be upgrading to Mac OSX. Macintosh
Office 98 is compatible with Office 97 and Office 2000, so you won't need
VPC unless you need to run something other than Office. There's an update
for Office 98 so it runs in System 9. Get the update from
http://www.microsoft.com/macoffice
If you have some extra cash spring for an Airport base station and an
Airport interface card. Then you can use the Power PC almost anywhere in the
house or outside in the yard and you won't have to have a phone line
connection to the computer.
-Jim
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In article <madwen-E0BED1....@news.binc.net>, Madwen
<mad...@mailbag.spammenot.com> wrote:
>
> My husband wants a laptop he can use both at home and when he travels
> (travel is maybe 2 days each 2 weeks.... not very much). His firm uses
> all PCs for CAD and for all other business except presentation graphics
> where Macs are used. He will not be using the laptop for graphics of
> any sort except for Excel type charts.... no biggie. The primary use of
> the laptop will be for running Excel (we have 5.x) or other similar
> software to do financial management, do some stock stuff over the
> internet, and type some occasional letters and email from home or on the
> road. He estimates his laptop usage time per week to be maybe ą5 hours
> but I am betting it will be higher once he finds out how much he can do
> wiht it. I am guessing that he might also play some games on it if that
> is possible with such a small screen. Neither of us have ever used a
> laptop though we are both long time Mac users.
>
> At work, he mainly uses Word for the PC, Outlook, Excel and IE. He is
> concerned about transferring his work from one platform to the other. I
> wondered about the efficacy of using SoftWindows or VPC on an iBook due
> to the speed. OTOH, it seems like a PowerBook is a rather large
> investment for his minimal needs. Can anyone experienced with laptops
> venture an opinion on this and what might be a better course of action
> to take? Thanks. :)
>
> Madeline