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excalibur313

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 7, 2003
780
5
Cambridge, MA
What do you guys think about the resale value of current aluminum powerbooks? I have one that I plan to sell when the intel ones come out but I'm curious when the best time to sell mine is. It's a 15" rev a powerbook with 1.25 gigs of ram, a 5400rpm hard drive, and has a brand new high density battery. I'm not sure if I could get more value for it before the intel ones come out (because it isn't really that much worse than the ones currently out) or after the intel ones come out (because it might be possible that some apps run faster on a ppc architecture (although I don't know the validity of this claim...can anyone enlighten me?)) I'm a college student who does use it for photoshop, mathematica and a few other apps so I could manage to live with out it for a little bit if needed if it would mean me getting more on the resale value of my laptop. On a slightly different topic how long before tablet macs? There is nothing more I'd like to do than take notes in class writing on the screen. Oh and also I was planning on getting a 12" so if they are really discontinuing the 12" powerbooks do you think that an intel ibook of that size would really suffer that much in terms of performance? (The 15" is too heavy to carry around everywhere and currently for the same price you can get a 12" and a 20" external monitor).
 

excalibur313

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 7, 2003
780
5
Cambridge, MA
Right, I plan on selling it on ebay but I guess the root of my question is whether you think it better to sell now or wait until after the intel books come out?
 

crazydreaming

macrumors 6502a
excalibur313 said:
(The 15" is too heavy to carry around everywhere and currently for the same price you can get a 12" and a 20" external monitor).

I'll have to dissagree with the portability of the 15" you mention. I carry mine in my backpack with me everyday and it doesn't bother me one bit. I've also heard from 17" owners who do the same. The 15" is still more portable than most PC laptops.

And, you're only talking a pound. 1 pound between the 12 and the 15... is a pound really too much to handle? :D
 

ozone

macrumors 6502
Feb 18, 2004
498
45
Ontario, Canada
It depends on the quality of the Rev A Intel books. If they suck or have some horrendous faults, everybody will be clamoring for an older PBook. If they're great, don't expect to fetch too much for an older PBook. Keep in mind that the new Intel PBooks could *theoretically* be able to better run Windows programs (after some hack, which will probably appear one day after they're released), which for someone like me, is a huge advantage.

I know many people on this site are saying the Rev A Intel books will not be too good just because they're the first revision, but I'm not so sure. The Intel chips have been in Windows laptops for a long time (computer wise) now so the bottom line is that manufacturers KNOW how to build them. Everything else except the exterior is going to be pretty much off-the-shelf. And if current reports of how well Mac OS X runs on Intel processors can be assumed true, there probably won't be a whole lot of software issues either. Sure there will be some issues, but I doubt there will be anything catastrophic.

I've been interested in a 17" PB for some time now, and although I bid on a few on EBay, I didn't succeed. However, I noticed that the 17" PB and 15" PB are now selling for about $250 to, I don't know, $500 (?) less than they did prior to the latest release of the high res screens. All they changed was the screen - which is one thing but the one thing that people wanted. I'd probably sell sooner rather than later, but hey, life is a gamble - your call.
 
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