Portions of the post that previously appeared in this space have been deleted. I would provide you with a reason why, but doing so would likely be against the TOS.

Applecare
 

Applecare nowadays is insurance, pure and simple. Years back you could call apple tek support and with apple care get help with wide variety of issues. Now that they have outsourced, you normally get someone reading from help manual in India or Philippines. Better off going to FT or better yet the apple discussions forum for help (see genius bar)

Genius bar is available to anyone, you merely make appointment on-line or in person and usually they are extremely patient and helpful. It's free for diagnostic and tek support (they are really nice about this) but if hardware problem that's when apple care kicks in (usually)....it's basically an extended warranty plan that covers you for repairs as long as problem isn't from spilling coffee onto keyboard or dropping onto floor, etc. etc.

I've purchased applecare for my ibook (now 4 yrs old) and needed it twice to fix/replace logic board and second time I forget exact problem. On my iMac, never had to use it. My son bought powerbook (now 4 yrs old) without applecare and fortunately never had to use it...although the hard drive is now on it's last legs.

So - insurance: expensive (?), good to have and if you play the odds will never need to rely on it. But if you do get zapped, you'll be thankful you had it.

IMHO

Portions of the post that previously appeared in this space have been deleted. I would provide you with a reason why, but doing so would likely be against the TOS.

I have just under 2000 photos on my laptop (most at 4 MP), 150+ songs (7.6 hours) in iTunes, lots of applications and lots of other documents. I know these aren't particularly high numbers, but I've used 36.25 GB of storage on my 120 gig drive. The photos use 3.22 GB; the music uses 1.05 GB. Another 2.51 gigs are six full audio CDs of language lessons. Applications total 10.92 gig, some of which I could recapture if I cared (I still have Office X in addition to Office 2004; that's 0.5 gig right there) and aren't growing much. My Documents folder is 7.93. Unless you're into video, which I'm not; have truly humongous libraries of something; or have really large files from another application you haven't mentioned; you should be OK.

Besides, 320 gig (more or less) drives will be cheap in two years. Any store that sells them will be able to swap your existing one out and put it in an external enclosure from which you can start up, copy everything to the new internal drive, and then use for backup.

Regarding which, any store that sells memory will be able to install that too - probably free.

[delete - inadvertent duplicate]

Portions of the post that previously appeared in this space have been deleted. I would provide you with a reason why, but doing so would likely be against the TOS.

Actually, $135 to upgrade is not horrible. The standard 1GB of RAM comes as two 512MB modules, so to upgrade on your own you have to toss both of those and buy two 1GB modules. Plus, you'd have to put them in (very very easy in MacBook, but still). Buying them from a third part would cost around $100 or thereabouts.

You could, of course, consider saving that as a later upgrade. It's quite possible you don't need 2GB of RAM based on the uses you have mentioned. I saw a recent test where someone got a new iMac with 2GB, pulled out 1GB and didn't notice a significant difference in performance. But, the new iMac does have a dedicated video card, whereas the MacBook does not. I think my mother is still limping along with 512MB to run her mostly word processing and web surfing MacBook. Tough call, could go either way. I'd probably wait and see, but PowerPoint may like some extra. (I don't do PowerPoint much at all.)

Personally, I think 120GB HD is more than adequate. I have 80GB drive, more than half empty at this stage after almost a year. But I don't have any huge libraries of music or photos on it.

PS Yes, very true on edu price of AppleCare. I had forgotten you were edu eligible.

What did you buy?
 

As another educator who is looking at the MacBook, I am curious as to what you finally purchased. I am looking at the 2GB RAM model, since I want to use the MacBook for PowerPoint presentations.

I am curious about the educator discount. My district is very Windows and Microsoft oriented, so no information about Mac discounts is distributed. When I visit the Apple Store website, there is no mention of educator discounts. Also, locally, only Best Buy and CompUSA are the only Apple retailers. I would appreciate any information on the discounts.:)

Got to http://store.apple.com/ and on the right hand side you'll see a graphic that says "Education / Savings for Students, Faculty and Staff" Just go in there, navigate to your school, and see the discounts you have available.

Or you can just put two fingers on the touchpad and click

I've had nothing but Apple laptops since 1992 as my sole machine. I live off of them. Always buy AppleCare. I've gotten a few real lemons over the years and while I will never use a Window's machine, you need the insurance.

IMHO always buy the most memory to start with. Apple machines can be VERY picky about the memory in them and there are only a very few outisde vendors who's memory I would buy. I know of too many issues caused by incompatible memory sticks.

20 gb HD
 

My 4 yr old G3 iBook has 20 gb HD and with cost of external hard drives, it's works just fine for my photos, iTunes, and other regular 'stuff'.

You can never have enough RAM or storage but 2 mb and 120 gb should be enough to keep you happy until Christmas :)

Portions of the post that previously appeared in this space have been deleted. I would provide you with a reason why, but doing so would likely be against the TOS.

Portions of the post that previously appeared in this space have been deleted. I would provide you with a reason why, but doing so would likely be against the TOS.

If you're looking for a bag in that price range, check out Timbuk2.