[ale] Macbook Pro 15" or Thinkpad W500?

[Daniel Howard]

Now that OpenOffice Aqua works so well on Macs (I just installed it on 
20 iMacs at my daughter's middle school), the only remaining hurdle with 
Macs (other than cost!) is the effort it took me to replace a hard drive 
on my daughter's iBook, and the fact that the Motherboard suddenly 
started overheating after 3 years (was hoping to get closer to five 
years out of it.  Here's the procedure I had to use to replace/upgrade 
the hard drive:

http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Mac/iBook-G4-12-Inch/Hard-Drive-Replacement/83/14/Page-1

Took me about 2 hrs and I only had one screw left over...(my unit didn't 
have exactly the same screws as the ones in the pic and I didn't notice 
that I removed one more somewhere in the process of getting it open. 
Nothing like as easy as removing one screw from a Dell, IBM, or Gateway 
and popping the drive out and replacing it...but not that bad really.

I think I posted this already, but we got an EEE PC 901 to replace her 
iBook when we realized the new iPod Touch units come with WiFi built in, 
so you don't need a Mac computer to order/download songs anymore.  She 
loves the eee PC, and since it's 2nd generation, the hinges look pretty 
hardened to massive mobility by teenagers.  Xandros Linux, but 
nonetheless easy to use and lots of good posts for issues when 
installing new software so far.

Best,
Daniel

-- 
Daniel Howard
President and CEO
Georgia Open Source Education Foundation