Way OT- Anyone using a Mac Powerbook?
 

...and will the 15in version fit in a BMW City Case?

Yes and Yes!
 

I have a G4 15 incher as my travel computer and I carry it in a Brenthaven backpack style case that was made for it. It will fit in my hard bags on my 78 R80/7 just fine......Almost positive it would fit in the city bags. If you like I could slip it into repoe's bags tonight for a test fit?

Thanks. No need to test it in repoe's bags just yet. I am none too far along in the buying decision process yet.

Do you use the Virtual PC software, and if so, are there any problems?

I was (and still am) a Windows 2000/XP user on my other systems. I merely copied all of the data files I wanted to use (Powerpoint, Word, Xcel, Adobe and paint stuff) over to a disk and dropped them on the powerbook. The only thing I noticed is some of the font and coloring would change, but that happens between differnet windows machines as well. I use a mix of older versions of 98, 2000 and XP files and they all work just fine. I create most of my documents on my Mac and give them to my support team to clean up and format, and they all use XP and or 2000.....No issues to date.

My favorite thing about OSX is no crashes. In the rare occassion a program will hang up, You can force quit only that application without having to restart. OSX is one of the most stable OS's I have ever used.

All of my USB devices work seamlessly as well. USB Zip drives, Mini disks and camera's. I am very happy with my G4.....

Are you saying you don't use Virtual PC, but just copy stuff over and use it with the Mac versions of Xcel, etc?

I would agree with Firebolter 100%. If there's a mac version of the app, definitely use it with your PC data files. Virtually all the file formats are platform independent as long as you have a native app to open them with.

Yes the 15" PB will fit in a city case, but only when in an insert and not in a soft brief case or anything. It is just the right size to have to be angled at 45 degrees and then you have to squeeze the case shut a little bit. It works okay, but uses virtually all the available space quite inefficiently. I had an older 15" and just picked up the new 12" which works MUCH better with the city cases. It stands up vertically against the front baffle in the case and allows for storage in the other 80% of the case volume. I actually did my 2 month trip around the states with it and got all my gear packed including quite a bit of it in the same case with the 12".

I was using a soft case to hold my 15" powerbook, but I recently notice some pretty severe "rub marks" on the case, so I'm looking for another solution. Unrelated, but I think long term I would worry about the vibration effects - I know I would routinely lose screws out of my PC notebooks.

-JC

Affirmative, I use the PC files and just open them within the same application only of the Mac version. I am using OSX operating system and OSX Office. Any graphic file can be opened in any app that uses that type file...I use Corel Draw, Photoshop and Canvas. All work well.

If I remember correctly, OSX is a dirivitive of or based on Linux which is a simple and very stable OS.

Will photgraphic and sound files formats work the same on a Mac? What about Microsoft Outlook for e-mail?

As you can tell I'm pretty ignorant of the Mac world, but I like what I see in terms of the style and usability.

Mac OS X is based on FreeBSD. It is not a Linux deriviative, but both are implementations of UNIX. Microsoft Office X for Mac is much nicer than the Windows version, in fact Office X is the best software MS sells, IMHO. Word and Excel files should always be exactly the same cross-platform. Sometimes Powerpoint files will contain minor font and graphics anomalies, but this happens intra-OS as well as someone above pointed out. I do almost all of my development on a Mac, even though I work in a Windows environment. I use Virtual PC for Windows Domain Administration tasks, nothing else. VPC is great and works really good, but it cannot compete with the speed of a native Wintel box. Speed is everything to me. I work on a Mac because it is faster for all the little things you need to do, and it just plain is easier on the eyes, which is important if you spend 12 hours a day looking at the thing.

For now, Outlook runs on OS9 which will run in a shell off of OSX. The OSX version is due out anyday if not already out there. I haven't looked in awhile, as I have been using the Internet Browser more and more to connect back to my email server. I work down in town and my home server is up at the lab in Maryland. We have to use VPN to connect up with our home server and that is a pain, so the browser method (Outlook Web Access) is easy and fast, but of course you loose all of the calendar and contacts versatility you have on the full up Outlook suite. Also I am piggy backing off of a another corporation LAN here so I have their firewall issues to deal with in addition to my lab's security/firewall stuff. Sometimes I just do dial up to get around that, but the LAN is preferred obviously.

As far as sound and graphic files go, I can run anything on my Mac that I can on my PC. I have had no problems at all running any types of files or formats. All most all types are supported in my experience.

Cool. Thanks for the info guys.