For anyone thinking about buying a desktop PC but getting stacked in the decisions by the portability issue, Apple PowerBook is a considerable choice. The aluminium frame and minimalist design provides aesthetic pleasure. The 15″ PowerBook is a balance of portability and performance weighing only 5.6 lbs and being 1.1-inch thick, using ambient light sensors to automatically adjusts the brightness of the display as well as the keyboard illumination. The screen is ideal for watching DVDs because allot of movies are now coming out in a widescreen format.

The speakers (on either side of the keyboard) are about as good as any other notebook speaker there is - no bass, but quite loud. The PowerBook keyboard (there is no delete’ key, although pressing the apple key and backspace simultaneously serves the same function) is full size, quiet, responsive and easy to use, but doesn’t have a lot of depth. On the touchpad, scrolling can be accomplished by using two fingers instead of one adding more to the easiness of use. All tasks are very responsive and comparable (The Mac OSX is very fast compared to Windows). However, some extra RAM memory is recommended to be added to the original 512Mb.

The PowerBook comes with quite a few ports on either side. On the left is the power connector, a phone jack, a USB 2.0 port, a lone-in/microphone jack, a headphone jack and a PC Card Slot. On the right is a DVI monitor output port, a S-video connector, a gigabit Ethernet jack, a Firewire 800 port, a Firewire 400 port, a USB 2.0 port and a security slot. The 2 USB ports may not be enough for these days when most of the gadgets and tools use this kind of connection. It also lacks a card reader. This Apple powerbook supports the WiFi 802.11g standard which does not have the most effective range of detection. Battery has an average life of about 3.5 hours.

Apple PowerBook 15-inch Specifications