<p>My husband wants a laptop to take with him in the car and use when he has a couple of hours free between gigs. He would basically be writing in Word. I was thinking that an iBook (G4) would suit his purposes and not be too expensive. Would eBay be an okay place for this? Or should I look for a local reseller? The refurbished Macs from Apple are very expensive.</p>
<p>The iBooks on eBay are in the $250 to $300 range and seem to be in pretty good condition, with a fairly new operating system installed. Our main computer is an iMac desktop. Any opinions?</p>
<p>We have bought a number of used Macs on ebay – both iBooks and MacBooks. We have always had good luck. I am working on one right now that is a least three years from when we bought and never a minute of problem</p>
<p>We have only purchased the refurbished from the Apple website and they have been great. The good thing about those is every computer is throughly inspected vs. the new ones that come off the assembly line. Also they have a warranty and for any reason you aren’t happy it can go back.</p>
<p>You’d have to run a pretty old version of Microsoft Office as I think that current versions don’t support the PowerPC architecture. If you want low-cost and computing needs are low, I’d just get a new or slightly used Windows laptop. You’d get much better battery life and have access to a much wider variety of applications. Performance per watt on Sandy Bridge is much, much better than what it was in the G4 days. You would also most likely get Wireless N with a new or newer laptop making it more useful for network connections.</p>
<p>Typing on my first macbook, an ebay purchase. I wanted to try mac this way before I dove in. LOVE it. It was packed with software. I would get a macbook. There are a lot of refurbished ones with new software. I bought a warranty with Square Trade, but have not had any issues. I paid around $599 and got the entire Microsoft library with Word and Excel and Powperpoint. I love the iphoto. I bought a eprinter and send docs to it from my macbook and my iphone from anywhere. In the house it is on wifi but I can sent from anywhere as it has an email address and I paid around $50 at office Depot. No wires. No cables.</p>