Question - would it be a simple process to install a Russian font? Not sure if anyone would know this.

On a Mac? There should already be some Cyrillic fonts installed. In any event, it's trivial to add new ones.

Not sure if anyone would know this.

That statement NEVER applies to the Buffistas, silly!

Cool!

Brenda, if money is an issue for him (and if it's not, tell him to send me some!), here are the pros/cons of the 3 different iBooks:

12-inch iBook -- has a 30 GB hard drive, a Combo drive (can play and burn CDs, and only play DVDs, not burn them), and a 1.2 GHz processor.

14-inch iBook without DVD-burning Superdrive -- has a 60 GB hard drive and a 1.33 GHz processor.

14-inch iBook WITH the DVD-burning Superdrive is the same as the one without it in terms of processor speed and hard drive size. The only difference is that you can burn DVDs and it costs $200 more.

All 3 come with the same amount of RAM (256 MB) and a wireless card built-in. The 14-inch monitor does NOT have higher resolution than the 12-inch; so the images on the screen will not be any sharper than on the 12-inch.

Most reviews I've read say that if you don't need/want to burn DVDs, then just get the 12-inch iBook. It's the best laptop for the money. The only caveat is that it comes with a 30 GB hard drive (versus 60 GB on the 14-inch iBooks), which is a decent amount of space -- unless you start storing movies/TV episodes/other such large files on it. I've used up about 30 GB of a 60 GB hard drive (that 30 includes pre-installed applications, though) without much effort.

Though if need be, I could keep a lot of the comics and TV episodes on CDs and/or an external hard drive.

To sum up: 12-inch iBook is under a grand, and it's a damned good laptop for the money.

For $300 more, the screen is slightly larger (but no sharper), the processor is a little faster, and the hard drive space is doubled. [That hard drive space is what made the decision for me to choose that one over the 12-inch, BTW.]

And then for $200 more than than (i.e., $500 more than the 12-inch), you can burn DVDs.

You can get a 12" iBook with a 60Gig or 80Gig HD as a build-to-order option. But wait, he wanted to buy it today, right?

My 1 3/4 year old 12" iBook came with a 40Gig HD (it was not a custom order). Kinda lame that now the default size is less.

Kinda lame that now the default size is less.

I haven't been tracking all that carefully, but my impression is that Apple's been doing this across the board in order to very slightly lower prices.

30 gig vs. 40 gig? What does that save them? $10?

If they have the money the Powerbooks are quite a bit nicer. Backlit keyboards on the 15 and 17 model, faster ethernet connection, FW800 on them as well. They can also do monitor spanning if you hook up an external display as opposed to just monitor mirroring.

The 15 and 17 have a standard DVI connector for external monitors as opposed to a special VGA connector where you need a dongle. The PB's also have better video cards, so if it's going to be a sole machine you'll get better graphics performance out of them.

Whatever you get bump the memory to a minimum of 1 GB of RAM.

Whatever you get bump the memory to a minimum of 1 GB of RAM.

768 MB is fine if going to 1GB is prohibitively expensive. That's what I have in my 15" Powerbook and I use it to edit video and do software development.