I recently bought myself a Mac Mini and I think its great. It comes with most of the software you need (Office Suite, Browser, FTP, Music and Video editing - yes really) and even if the windows software you are currently using isn't available I'm sure you'll be able to find a Mac alternative.

The Dock (OS X taskbar) takes a bit of getting used to, basically you keep your common applications there to launch them and all running applications are shown there. If you click on an application in the dock it will either:
1. Launch it
2. Focus the most recent window.
Right clicking brings up the full list of windows for that application and a couple of other features.

If you are just going to stick linux on either anyway, then go for the one that offers the cheapest and best specification hardware because your experience will be the same. If you are considering using OS X (a very refined BSD distribution with full command line remember) then I don't think you'll be disappointed.

By the way, in 13 years of computing this is the first Mac I've owned, although we used them at school.

Har du kollat på dell.se? Dom har massor med riktigt billiga grejor där, nere runt 6000 SEK. Så får du köra Windows och Linux kommer att funka lite bättre.

Men annars är ju iBooken nice. Du får börja med att partionera om den, kan du göra från OSX installetions-CD:n eller en linux-installerare.

Mac hands down.

I use a PC quite a bit. But my favorite platform is the Mac.

Try Camino on the Mac... and you'll understand. It's bliss.

I used Windows for years and now use Linux all the time at work, and until recently, at home. I just bought a Mac for home and I have to say that Mac OSX is a cut above the rest. Even if you don't like it, you should use it to get a feel for the way things could be.

mac is cheaper? you must be kidding.
you can buy a cetrino pc for well less than $1000 these days, with the price of ibook you can surely buy a PC notebook comparable to a powerbook.
and if you really want mac, go with powerbook.

The Mac is a great choice, but if Linux wireless is a must for you, you're going to be disappointed; no Linux drivers exist for the Airport Extreme card (a source of strife for me too). I make do, mostly because OS X is such a great OS, but it'd be nice to feel the freedom to use Linux too.

Some numbers to consider:
1) 256 MB of RAM is acceptable but not great. I ran my iBook for a long while on only 256, and you do start to notice it drag when you're running a number of applications. Luckily, you can easily pop in an extra 512 MB chip when you're able to afford it.

2) Don't be fooled by GHz ratings. A comparison of CPU speed based on clock rate is entirely useless. The only time clock speed is an valid characteristic for comparison is when comparing chips in the same family (e.g. Pentium 4). That said, unless the bus is significantly wider on the iBook (I honestly don't know), the bus itself is likely slower. I don't think it'll make a difference.

I suggest a Mac, but I *always* suggest a Mac, so take that recommendation for what it's worth. :)

I highly recommend the iBook. After switching from a Linux/Win dual-boot machine, my productivity increased a lot, because everything ... just works.

You might make different experiences with Linux on the Mac, but are you sure, you need it? With OS X you get a BSD which is fully integrated with the OS X UI. You have access to all the open source SW that is out there, and if you don't develop and test software that has to run on Mac Linux, I can't see no reason to run Linux.

The 256MB RAM might be not enough. If you want to extend it, don't by RAM at Apple, it's too expensive.

For the clock speed: There is the possibility to decrease the speed in the system preferences of OS X, and there's even an automatic mode which decreases the speed in idle times, but I don't know, if you can change these settings with Linux.

I've found a lot of x86 notebooks (for example, Acer) cheaper than iBooks; but the weird thing is:

Those cheap PCs come with a 15" screen and are pretty big. In the PC world, it's like: "All right, about 15" screen; that's the cheapest, and if you want larger, that's more expensive, and if you want cheaper, that's also more expensive".
In the Apple world, it's like "Smaller = cheaper, larger = more expensive".

And since I prefer a smaller computer...

I don't know I'll be getting an iBook next time, but I have one now that I bought a year ago. Couldn't find a cheaper PC that was about as small. The iBook came with a pretty nice Radeon for the time, too.

I only run Linux, so I'm not tied down to either hardware platform.

I've just dumped Windows for a 17in Powerbook and I will *never* go back. What you're terming 'becoming comfortable' actually means learning to tolerate the crashes, patches and other hokum which makes using windows a pain. Go for the iBook: you won't regret it.

The first Mac I owned was a Mac Mini which I bought because I wanted the cheapest way possible to try out Mac OS X.

It's well worth the money and the benefits of Mac OS X coupled with the quality of apple hardware have meant that when I finally replace my laptop it will be a Mac.

As people have mentioned it's got a BSD base, it's not exactly BSD (the kernel is called Darwin and is open source) it has all the power of Unix that you could want available from the command line while still keeping all the user friendliness that Apple is famous for (there's no tasks that an average user would need the command line for, it's just there for those that want it).

Something it definitely beats Windows over is administrative access, in Mac OS X it's safe for you to make your normal user account an administrative account. By default an administrator only has access to the same resources a normal user has and if they do something that requires administrative access a box pops up asking you to enter your password to confirm. This is much safer than the way windows does things.

Of course some things take getting a bit used to, I've got used to the 'start menu' concept thanks to Windows and KDE but the dock is good once you've got used to it.

Also well worth getting used to is expose which is a great way for switching between windows.

Oh yeah, and it also gives you a chance to write Camino help ;)

I use both Mac and Windows systems, and prefer using the Mac by far. It won't take you long to get used to the Mac interface again.

Yes you can use the bundled CD's to create two partitions, one for Mac and one for Linux. When I upgraded the HD on my 4 year old PowerBook I created three partitions, 2 for Mac filesystems and one for linux, but just having two partitions, one for each OS will be fine.

I currently dual boot Mac OS 10.2.8 and Debian Gnu/linux (sarge version). Works fine. I have an older Mac wireless card which works fine, and I have Thunderbird sharing the same mail folders and filters for both OS's.

Ernst, I've checked dell.se and the cheapest laptop available costs SEK 7237, and weighs over 3 kilograms. If you can find one for just SEK 6000 with 802.11g and a more lightweight hardware, please let me know. :)

Burgen, please show me where I can find cheaper PC laptops in Sweden. Importing from another country is not an option because of the toll fees. You also say "if you really want a mac, go with powerbook." As I said, I can't afford those prices. You can't find a PowerBook under $1000, can you?

Joe, I'm sad to hear that. That's a showstopper for me. I'm sure Mac OS X is a great OS, but I need the ability to run Linux as well, even though I might prefer Mac OS X.

Daniel, yes I'm sure I need it. I need it for educational purposes and for communication with this desktop computer.

Sunnan, exactly! The PC laptop manufacturers seem to think that everyone wants a huge laptop that isn't at all portable. The iBook meets my needs better.

"Apple are fools not to make the source code to the AirPort device driver available"

Don't blame Apple for the lack of Airport Extreme drivers in linux. Apple simply uses the Broadcom chipset in their branded card. However, Broadcom has chosen not to release drivers for linux and no one has reverse engineered them either. x86 users have used the windows drivers with an emulation layer to get it to work, but that is a pretty ghetto hack.

I wonder why you still need Linux, when you have Mac OS X? Every noticeable open source Linux/Unix application that I can think of, has either been ported to Mac OS X (e.g. Firefox) or can easily be run on OS X using fink or darwinports.

There are third party wireless cards you can buy for the Mac which are supported by Linux, or you can buy an older 802.11b Apple branded card. I'm sure within the next year someone will reverse engineer the latest Airport Extreme card, which will then let you participate in 802.11g goodness.

As Simon mentioned above, with Mac OS X there is really no need for Linux (dual boot) - it has an X11 client built in to the OS so you can run just about any X11 program either right from the laptop, or off the server using ssh X11 forwarding.

As you say, you will have a hard time finding a PC laptop as portable, tough, light, and cheap as the 12" iBook. Get an external USB wireless adaptor for the iBook. A lot of PC laptops also come with Broadcom wireless chips, so you will be in the same boat.

Or you could get something used. Older iBooks have supported wireless cards.

Depending on the PC laptop, you may run into issues with limited support for the nvidia graphics chip.

OS X is slow, and has it's fair share of unintuitive "features". You may want to consider just deleting it and going pure Linux. Try Ubuntu. I recently installed it on an older powerbook with 512MB of ram, and it was much better then OS X.

Well, I have to add my 2 cents :-)

Ok, I switched to an iMac G4 20" in December 2003. Well, I ain't going back to a PC, ever.

At work, I use a PC (Win2K) and a Sun Blade 150 under Solaris 8 + gnome 2.0 and a MAC OS Theme. The PC is a pain in the b.., I tend to use the Sun a lot more even though it's a lot slower. If I could give back the PC and only use the Sun, I'd do it right away.

*** NOTE ***, Tiger is said to need 64 MB of RAM on the video card to exploit this one better, I haven't checked this (since I do have the 64 MB on my video card), so you might want to go the pBook 12" instead of the iBook.

Otherwise, go test drive a couple of machines. If you don't fall under the charms of OS X, then buy the PC.

All the friends I know that have switched to a Mac never regretted their move.

A bit pricey on the hardware side (but it's coming down), but you'll save a lot of time that you can spend working instead of fixing you PC toy !