The trusty G4 Powerbook

For the past four years, my laptop of choice has been a G4 Apple Powerbook. A loyal servant it has been too. It's been in surgery a few times over the years for a new battery, various RAM upgrades, a new screen and a general refurb. It's been a great laptop and continues to perform well. It's just that the harddrive is a bit small and it's got a few dinks and dents in the casing.

Replacement

So a suitable replacement was sought.... Of course, it had to be an Apple, but the choice was whether to have a Macbook Pro or just a Macbook. After having a dig around, reading various reviews and checking them out in John Lewis it was apparent that there is actually very little between the high end Macbook and the Macbook Pro's. The specs of the top Macbook read as follows:

• 2 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo
• 1GB Ram
• 80GB hard drive
• Super drive for burning DVD's and CD's

The only noticeable difference to the Macbook Pro is the size of the screen; 13.3" instead of the Pro's 15.4". Since the laptop is only really for use on the road, size was a factor and quite frankly I'd rather have a smaller laptop. If they still made a 12" model like the used to, i'd probably have gone for that instead.

What's it like?

Well being a big Apple fan anyway, naturally I love it. The screen is one of these new glossy ones, which just adds to the visual affects of the Cocoa/aqua graphics engine of OS X. It seems fast, has an airport (wireless) built-in, comes with bluetooth and even a remote control; which is used to control iTunes, Videos, DVD's and picture slide shows. Overall I am really pleased with it, but a little sorry to see the demise of my old Powerbook.

Fun with Photobooth...

All Macbooks have a camera built into the lid, which is cool... Even cooler is the Photobooth software that you get with it. Childish I know, but loads of fun can be had using this software to create stupid, distorted faces....

Overall...

So if you're looking for a new laptop, don't overlook the new range of Macbooks - and with the Intel chips inside they even dual boot into Windows - no excuses not to now! That means you too Ian!