no offense taken because that's a different subject. I was speaking in terms of physical robustness. the logic board problem has nothing to do with physical robustness (heat warping does) and hasn't been a problem for ibooks since October 2003.

now, if I had the money, yes I would certainly buy a powerbook. it's a really sweet machine with a lot more "power", but the ibook is truly a great product. I've had it since early january last year and have restarted it perhaps ten times, mostly when installing os updates. regarding it's physical attributes, i've never had a problem with it getting too hot. it can get a little warm if i rip four or five cd's one after another, but that's about it. so, you know, a good ibook slogan perhaps: "the ibook, NOT a sperm killer."

the only thing that upsets me about the ibook is the 32mb of video ram. 32mb is fine but i think everything would be a bit sweeter in os x with 64.

my iBook. get a bit way too hot here in Malaysia. I have 3 external fan blowing at it. 2 behind, and one at the left side. However, I normally run it in air-condition room.

I've been a pretty hardcore Linux user for the last 5 years or so. I have it installed on 5 machines at home including my primary desktop.

Recently I finally decided to break down and buy a new laptop... I went with the Powerbook 17" because I was in love with the screen (I like to be able to have a webpage and a few vim windows open at once in the field). I have to say I love it. Everything in MacOS 10.3.7 works so well for me. The wireless networking, bluetooth, multiple display stuff, it all just works. No hassle what so ever. I can get to printers on my home network through ipp. I can pull up terminals and use bash. Its got all the familiar unix stuff with a nice user interface sitting on top of it.

I still love linux, but when it comes to power management, wireless networking, and stuff like hibernation MacOS is far more advanced.

As far as battery life goes.. so long as I'm not running CPU (or disk intensive) tasks (which I usually don't) I can get a good 3:45 minutes of work off the battery.

The powerbook does get a touch hot on the bottom, but it isn't any worse then my old dell was. For a 17" laptop it is super thin (1"), and fairly light for it's size (< 7lbs according to my scale).

Only hardship I've had with this puppy was finding a bag to fit it that I liked.

I think a iBook running yellowdog would be quite the suite action machine though. PowerBook has a lot of periferals that may cause compiling problems..