Mac Forum / General / Portable Macs / April 2004

I'm currently on a trip in Japan, and I've noticed that computers are
cheaper here than back home (Norway that is).

I'd really like a small,portable machine instead of my huge, bulky,
heavy PowerMac 9600 (upgraded with a G3 processor), bulky monitor,
lots of cables etc.
I'm aiming for a simpler life in other words with a all-in-one box.

I haven't been following the development the last few years,but having
asked around here I've understood that the iBooks are mostly made for
students and the Powerbooks for the more "professional" user.
I don't consider myself a professional, but apart from the compactness
and portability, the main reason for all of this is that I need
something for editing my videos (Mini-DV), and I've been told that you
need a pretty powerful machine for that sort of thing.
I would also like to use it for making music with, MIDI and audio.
Other than that, the usual Internet stuff,word processing, Photoshop
etc.

As a price/performance compromise I've been thinking about the 12" G4
Powermac with a Superdrive meaning that I can burn my own DVDs as the
final result which would be great, watching my movies on any DVD
player.

Is this a good model to choose? I know there are 15" and 17" models of
the same machine as well, but they're more expensive, and do I really
need it? Is the 12" screen small? Is it possible to connect an
external monitor to the machine if I should need that later on? Any
monitor, or a special kind that only works on a Powermac?

As for buying it in Japan.... I've understood that the language thing
is no problem as MacOS X comes with all languages built in, so I can
simply change the language to English if I want -is that correct?

But the keyboard is a little different. For one, the spacebar is very
short (to accommodate for other keys beside it). Would it be possible
to add a "normal" spacebar to it, and removing the keytops of the keys
beside it, making it into a Norwegian keyboard (basically a US/UK
keyboard with 3 additional characters, although symbols etc. are
mapped slightly differently from a US or UK keyboard)?

Finally, I'm very confused about the names of these Powermacs... it
seems like different models go by the same names, but have different
specifications.
The one I've been looking at is the one currently for sale.But are
there other Powerbooks a bit older (and cheaper because of this) that
I could look into?
Second hand is definitely an option.

Hallvard