Derek wrote:

In the meantime, you've got me
curious about the pre-MacBook generation laptops. This might be a relatively
inexpensive way of getting my feet wet until I have to trade up from the A31. Does anyone
have suggestions about which Mac models might be worth looking out for?

There are 2 families of notebooks: iBooks and Powerbooks, the pre-Macbook generations have a G3 or a G4 CPU. I suggest taking a G4 notebook (I had a G3 iBook running at 800 MHz and 640 MByte RAM - Scrivener ran fine on that machine, NeoOffice was really sluggish; and some G3 models had motherboard problems).

The iBook family is cheaper but less robust than the Powerbooks; moreover, the iBooks only support 1.024x768 pixel (even on an external display). There are 12" and 14" display iBooks and 12", 15" and 17" display Powerbooks - so it depends on you what you need and are ready to carry around.

What is important: Put as much RAM into the machine as possible, Tiger (and Leopard) and the applications will run noticeably faster.

If you have more questions: Feel free to ask.

Franz