The Basics
April 5th 2004: This review has been updated to reflect more specifics.

Well, as I read the other review mentioned, I learned that they said they were using a G4. Well, the system I am reviewing is a iBook G3 900MHz laptop with a 14.1 inch screen, an ATI video card with AGP at 32MB of RAM, a 128MB of RAM base expanded to 640MB, a 40GB HD two USB, 1.0 ports, one firewire 400 port, one display port, one 56 modem port, and one 10/100 ethernet port, and an updated operating system from Jaguar to Panther(10.3.3). What is the difference? Well, virtually nothing in processor speed. Supposedly a G4 is more efficient in processing, making a G4 of similar speed a touch faster than a G3 900MHz.

Terms
G3 and G4 are processor names in Apple's computer line. They are equivalent to Pentium II and Pentium III. Where a G5 might be equivalent to a Pentium IV. Apple processors are RISC where their Intel counterparts are CISC. This is the design of their processors. What it basically means for the consumer is faster processing of images and generally faster processing of internet data on the Apple end. Hence the reason Graphic Design and Graphic Design students often using Apples. Word processing is by far and away faster on Intels. A 10/100 port(RJ45) is the same port you would use to connect to a service provided router to get DSL. Airport is Apples name for a wireless network card off of their internal PCMCIA port. Airport and similar technologies can be used in internet cafes that offer wireless service in house. A 56 port(RJ11) is a port for a 56KB modem. As many have experienced, it is slower than 10/100. You can counter the day to day slowness, excluding downloads, by getting a more efficient browser and using that instead of Explorer or Safari. For example, I have found Firefox .8(mozilla browser) is faster on dial-up than any other browser I have, and combined with a clean earthlink connection on my iBook at 19.2KB is often as fast as most pages load up in my DSL connection. Downloads are well... still slow. At the same time.. and very odd, I have found that Safari 1.2(mac browser) is faster on a DSL connection than Firefox .8. Although I don't have an explanation for this weird phenomenon, I have observed it time and time again. I have also observed that using Explorer(IE for mac) on DSL is no big thing, but using Explorer(IE for mac) on dial-up is slower than watching snails race.
USB(Universal Serial Bus) is a general multipurpose port with two levels of speed, USB 1.0 which is slower and USB 2.0 which is faster. USBs have hubs that you can buy that will allow you to hook up to 7 pieces of hardware up to one port. Firewire, also called 1394, is a port for high speed uploading and downloading like online video conferencing, digital video uploading from a digital video camcorder, or hard drive processing. Trackpad is one of two methods employed by laptops for use as a mouse.
Tabbed Browsing is an option employed by many browsers, with an exclusion of microsoft currently, that allows multiple webpages to load up in the same window organized by tabs below the address line. Once you get used to tabbed browsing, particularly with keyboard shortcuts and the ability to open any link in another tab instead of another window,.. it's pretty hard to go back. Browsers that support tabbed browsing are Firefox, Camino, Mozilla, Safari, iCab, Netscape 7.1, and Opera.

My Experience
Aside from buying this from CompUSA new in September and other than Apple releasing the same size G4 iBook for the same price that November, I really don't have any big issues with it. This lack of issues is likely due to the fact that I fortunately had the money to max this baby out the day I bought it. I bought a 512MB RAM card and an Airport card and she was going to be happy that night. Later that night, I installed the RAM via the included instructions and also installed the Airport card. Soon I had 640MB of RAM and 802.11 raring to go. The memory was necessary, because we always want more more more. So, I maxed it out so I couldn't have any more. Theorizing that I wouldn't want any more... until November happened...grrr. Either way, she is a beauty, and a jewel. I haven't found an application I couldn't run except for Final Cut Pro which checks to see if you have a G4 processor, and if you don't, instantly says, 'can't install due to...' She has 512KB of L2 Cache, which essentially means she runs faster than your friends Celeron Desktop. She also has 32MB of separated, not shared, Video Memory. So, your animation programs like Blender, Cinema4D, and Maya PLE will work. Unfortunately, Windows XP Professional is slower than a snail on this system... well, at least it feels like that. Judging by the speed on my system, I'd guess Windows XP Professional needs at least 1.25GHz G4 to run applications adequately. This is problematic for sure, because Windows XP won't run on G5s.

Tech Support
The tech was very helpful and suggested that I had operating system file damage when my system decided to go on a startup crashing fit. Even though it did crash at startup, it was stable once you were logged in. Fortunately it was within 90 days of my Panther purchase. Otherwise the cost is somewhere around 26.95 every time. Paying for Applecare Protection at purchase is not a bad idea. I reached a tech in under ten minutes.

Compatibility
Well, this is a first for Mac. You save it, it works on a PC. Can you believe that? On the other hand.. getting that same saved file to work with OS 9.2 is a pain in the neck at times. I burn CDs, and they work for the person I do image editing for. PSDs, GIFs, and JPEGs is what I've been mostly using via Photoshop 7 and Photoshop Elements 2. He's on a PC, I'm on a Mac. OS X(ten) does change the rules.

Durability
I accidentally dropped this from my bed one time, about 2 1/2 feet to 3 feet up. Other than the misaligned battery, the not perfectly aligned CDRW/DVD drive, and a small piece of the monitor cushion slightly moved on the left, there isn't any damage. All usability is still intact. Although, if you are buying a laptop for someone who is responsible and... well.. coordination is not their strong point, I would recommend that you consider spending the extra money on a http://www.panasonic.com/computer/toughbook/home.asp who make the tough book line. The line is designed for business; there is no laptop line that is as durable as that line. It costs extra money, and some of you may think it over zealous. However, if you see 5 ft drops off of school desks a likelihood, it may not be all that much of an embellishment.

Gaming
A lot of people are disappointed in Macs and their gaming compatibilities. Well, there is truth to that. For example, I really enjoy a game called Battlefield 1942, which won the 2002 best PC game award. Available for mac? No, it's not.
On the other hand, I have a demo of Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon, and full versions of Warcraft III, America's Army, Chopper, Sigma Chess, and Goban on my system right now. I'm thinking about getting some new James Bond game or Everquest for my next game. Who knows, maybe I'll get Crash Bandicoat instead.
The only bad thing is games and other programs that waste memory. Warcraft III at max resolution, framerate, and lighting does not(yes, I have Warcraft III maxed out when I play it, slowdown is unnoticeable until you have 12 guys fighting in one area and four or five guys fighting simultaneously in another). However, some do. Which means that 32MB may be enough Video RAM, and it may not be. Sometimes it is simply a matter of processor speed. Usually, however, it is a matter of the company releasing a title before its been tweaked better. Still, we are talking about a laptop for school and home.. it's not meant to be a gaming machine.

Applications
Adobe Photoshop 7, Adobe Illustrator 10, Adobe Acrobat Professional, Adobe Image Ready, Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0, Macromedia Fireworks MX 2004, Macromedia Freehand MX, Macromedia Flash MX 2004, Macromedia MX 2004, Final Cut Express, Microsoft Office X: includes Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Entourage, Safari 1.2, IE 5.2mac, Camino .7, Firefox .8, Firebird .7, Omniweb, iCab, Maya PLE, Cinema4D Demo, Blender, QuarkXPress 6.0 Demo, Opera, Loony Labyrinth Pinball, Real One Player, Microsoft Media Player, and Norton Internet Security for Mac ALL run fine on my machine.

Hardware
(2) USB 1.0 ports... ouch. data transfer is obviously faster with USB 2.0. However, at the moment, one USB is being used for my optical mouse and the other USB is being used for my keyboard. Yes, I am using my laptop as a desktop right now.
(1) 1394 400MHz port.. this is a mighty useful port for Digital Video or an external Hard Drive. Apple wants you to spend some good money to get this in 800MHz version on a laptop.
(1) 40GB HD, you can buy an external Iomega HD, and you can also buy a 60GB from some places.
(1) 14.1" LCD... its nice... I think I want a 17" desktop display right now though. Some of you want 17" wide laptop displays. It really isn't worth it. If you've got that kind of money to burn, just buy a 23" monitor for your laptop or desktop so you can watch movies.
(1) 10/100 Ethernet ~ this is nice, gigabit and laptop equal big bucks, 10/100 is good enough
(1) 56Kb ~ This is a useful port, if your on dial up you need it, if you have DSL, then you can use it as a backup line when DSL goes on a freak glitch
(1) Headphone port... I have a little 68W speaker system plugged in... its pretty nice
(1) Built in mic ~ this is a lot better quality than you would think. I've recorded me playing the recorder and this little mic has caught me breathing.

The Operating System - OS X(ten) .3 (Panther)
Personally, its not much different than Windows XP. Stuff is in different places, which does take time to learn, but its the same thing. (And there are keyboard shortcuts for nearly everything!) Everything is automatic. For example, plug in a ZIP disk without installing the driver, guess what? It just starts working, just like Windows XP. Or a keyboard. Or a printer. Or a mouse. Or a mic. Or a camera.
If your system ever does crash, you may get a system file damaged that you'll never see until you update again, at which point your system might start repetitively crashing. Not like Windows XP doesn't do that too. In fact, neither system even tells you that happened if it does happen. Unlike Microsoft though, Apple includes disks for full install(not just backup disks!) of the specific operating system with this laptop, allowing you to select an option called Archive and Install, saving your apps, documents, user accounts, while installing the whole base system again.

The basic programs of this OS and their XP equivalents are:

iTunes plays audio and burns CDs much like Media Player. Lets talk about burning for a moment. My last burned mini CD as an audio CD via iTunes plays fine in a little 50 dollar karaoke/CD player from K-mart. The only exception to this is the new security they are putting into songs now depreciates the recorded version. I could burn regular size CDs, but mini CDs fit in pockets easier.

iMovie plays and records Movie files just like its XP equivalent
iDVD plays dvds just like Media Player
iCal is the Calendar ever GUI OS seems to have to have
Calculator... should be self explanatory

Sound Studio records audio like Windows recorder.. except in this case, a lot better due to options and less time limits

Chess is OS X's version of a free game.. similar to solitaire and pinball in XP... on the other hand... you can play Chess with just your voice...got to give Apple coolness props for that.

Mail is similar to Outlook.

Safari is similar to Explorer, there are some differences..

Explorer is the best browser for interpreting badly written web pages and making them look good as it has a ton of propietary tags to it. Safari is faster, has tabs for multiple pages in a single window. So you'll get there faster with Safari and will be more efficient overall, but Explorer will view more pages pleasurably. Some notes on this topic. http://www.w3.org makes the language usage standards for the most popular web languages. They provide a http://validator.w3.org for people to test their web pages or even those peoples' competition. Much like getting a kid to write a good essay might be a chore, getting people do their webpages well is just as impossible. For this reason, multiple web browsers abound, all of which try to interpret most everybody's badly written essays, if you will tolerate that analogy. Although these browsers don't give grades, they really should. And this boils down to trying to get a team of programmers to get a computer to be good at interpreting mistakes and/or carelessness. The fact is that Explorer has http://www.mozilla.org coding.. IF the page identifies itself properly. Otherwise, Explorer is using its own code to interpret the page. When all of this interpreting is finished, you see the page. It all happens pretty quick now, though its taken a lot of people years to get to the point we're at. Oddly enough, many programs for creating pages don't even identify their page properly. What do you expect for 300 dollars? Oh... you expected it to write the code correctly and identify it properly? lol... well, it is usually not the case. The code is often written correctly, maybe not well, but correctly. Pages are seldom identified correctly. Now this doesn't prevent me from doing my online banking in Safari or checking my email at yahoo or playing an online game at yahoo games. In fact, it works great, with a few bug issues in the yahoo games portion. If you want to chat in Yahoo, I recommend you use the IE 5.2 that comes with the laptop or download iCab, as both of those browsers support Yahoo chat. If you go to http://www.westwoodonline.edu school, only http://www.mozilla.org browsers and http://www.netscape.com/ns/browsers/download.jsp(better in this case) work well with their pages. Safari 1.2 and Explorer 5.2 appear to run it well until you start going through the forms.

iPhoto imports from your Digital Camera and allows minimal editing capabilities; Once again, XP has a similar program as well. In fact, I haven't had a problem with my Olympus digital camera working with iPhoto yet.

User Security preferences is much different than say, Windows XP Home. Whether you have OS 10.2 (Jaguar) or OS 10.3 (Panther) you have security options much like XP professional. What this essentially means is you have specific program access control for every person on your computer should you choose to use it. In Windows XP home, you have 3 settings, Administrator, Limited, and Guest. Thats it.. that's all she wrote. Now, there is two words that you can type in the run command box that give you a windows 2000 like security menu, however the menu is limited. Although I don't remember what those words are, I originally found them in Missing Manual Windows XP Home. Now, the base system of OS X(ten) is Unix. And this means file control... unbelievable file control. However, to get that insane power in file control you need to learn Unix.

XBench
These are XBench scores for my 900MHz G3 iBook with an added 512MB of non-apple RAM. These scores are real scores, that is, they are run with programs all over my hard drive, no disk utility run for days, on one of 3 of my partitions, and no defragmentation run for days. I list any max score of category if it reached over a hundred. I ran the test clean through a disk image after restart, then I ran it polluted via Camino open and running, while I ran it on the hard drive.

41.21(Disk Image) 45.14(Hard Drive)
CPU 24.02(max floating point library at 102.32)
Thread 56.30
Memory 31.12(max allocate at 723.02)
Quartz 78.24(max text at 107.50)
OpenGL 62.59
User Interface 100.55 (Hard Drive)
Disk Test(Disk Image) 26.84, Sequential 17.72, Random 55.26
Disk Test(Hard Drive) 55.51

Today's 1.33 MHz G4 w/Velocity Engine 14" iBook would completely toast these scores. And with 53G, it is 5 times faster at wireless internet too... if the base has a G, that is. It is definitely fast enough to do normal applications, some graphics work, and some gaming. A lot of gaming or a lot of graphics work is just better if you buy one of today's models maxed out at apple's online store. Yes, next year I might say the same thing.