Well, Apple Computer has done it again. The company's recently released PowerBook G4 redefines how a notebook computer should look and feel, just as its iMac and G4 Cube led the way for new desktop computer designs.
Although it won't attract die-hard PC users, Apple's first G4-based portable, encased in a tough, sleek titanium shell, has enough elegant good looks to win top honours at a Milan fashion show.
We tested the 500MHz PowerBook G4, which comes with 256MB of system RAM, a 20GB hard drive and a built-in DVD-ROM player, and we found that the titanium G4 isn't just another pretty face. In our lab tests, the 500MHz PowerPC-based notebook out-ran a 600MHz Pentium III-based notebook using Adobe Systems 's Photoshop 6.0, and when we ran Microsoft 's Office 2001 productivity applications for the Macintosh, the G4 portable more than held its own.
Let's face it; unless you're performing some herculean task in an Excel spreadsheet, even 300MHz-based notebooks deliver Office application performance that's outstanding. Just about any task, such as scrolling through a Word document, finding a word in one or even recalculating the national debt in Excel, usually happens instantaneously.
We installed Apple's latest operating system, Mac OS X -- which is due to hit shelves in Australia later this month -- on the PowerBook G4 and were pleased with the unit's performance (although we experienced about 15 minutes less battery run-time than when the PowerBook was running Mac OS 9.1). The G4 has been shipping since last month with Mac OS 9.1, but consumers will have the option of buying a unit with Mac OS X pre-installed from around the round the middle of 2001.
The 2.6cm-thick PowerBook G4 features an extra-wide screen that measures 15.2 inches on the diagonal but weighs only 5.3 pounds. The generously proportioned screen 15.2in delivers 1,152 by 768 pixels vs. the standard 1,024 by 768 pixels. By not increasing the height of the screen over the G3 model, Apple made the PowerBook G4 easy to use on a crowded plane, and the extra 128-pixel width will come in handy for Photoshop jockeys as a parking place for the application's tool palettes.
Apple PowerBook G4
Company: Apple
Phone: 133 622
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