Hello,

I've been travelling in North, Central and South America for four and a half months now with my Apple iBook. With respect to size, it's basically the same dimensions, and has Airport and DVD/CD-RW. The major difference is that the iBook has the G3 CPU instead of the faster G4.

I don't use a case but just pack my clothes tightly around it in one of my metal boxes. This has been fine so far, but in colder weather (when I'm wearing all my clothes) it could cause problems. When I looked, Pelican didn't make a case that fitted the laptop without being too bulky.

I don't see how BlueTooth could be useful since you're unlikely to be trying to connect to other devices. Airport does peer-to-peer networking if you come across another person with a laptop, anyway. Airport, while it's fantastic at home, in the office and in the first world, isn't a lot of use in poorer countries where wireless networking just isn't known.

Apple hardware is top quality and their laptops are a delight to use. I haven't had anything break, and I've been over lots of rough roads. Battery life is excellent. OS X (I'm using 10.2) is a bit slow and iPhoto in particular was badly written and is a bit of a dog, but it may be more acceptable on the PowerBooks.

If you are using a digital camera (I have a Canon G2) then having a laptop is excellent - no worries with storage and you can label and manipulate the files so easily. This is pretty much the sole reason I took the iBook - I researched digital wallets a fair bit and found a lot of people having problems with reliability, and they're also relatively expensive for what they can do.

So, all in all, if you're convinced a laptop is something you'll take, I have no problems recommending one from Apple.

James.

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James Courtier