Product Review

[Voice Recognition and eMachines M5310] [Canon 6.3MP EOS Rebel Digital Camera] [Voice Over IP] [HP Pavillion ZD7000] [Radio Shack 6-in-1 Remote] [Palm Zire 71] [Perfect Notebook Part 2] [Perfect Notebook] [Do LCD's make a difference?] [Digital Camera Binoculars] [Maxtor Backup] [Apple iBook Part 2] [Apple iBook Part 1] [Sony Vaio Laptop] [Panasonic’s KX-TG4000B 4 Line, Multi-Cordless Handset] [Brother MFC-9700] [E-Machines] [Dual Monitors] [Sony Clie PDA] [IDE Raid Controllers] [Olympus C700 Digital Camera]

Apple iBook Part 1

Apple iBook Product Review Part 1

Have you all seen the ads?  I mean, does Apple really expect to convince us to switch to Apple computers?  No, I don’t think so either.  I’d sure like to know what they paid those people though.  If the price were right, I might consider switching!  Anyway, enough poking fun at Apple.  Recently, I needed to purchase a Macintosh computer.  Since our business is Web Page Design and marketing, and 4 to 5 percent of web traffic is from Apple based systems, I thought it would be wise to make sure that things worked and looked right across all platforms.

So I went to Apple’s web site to look for a “bargain.”  I surely don’t want to shell out a bunch of cash for something that I’m not going to use everyday, but if I was buying something for work, I wanted it to be current technology.  I decided to get an iBook.  The model I wanted was over $1300, so I decided to see if they had any refurbished products.  To my great delight, they had the model I wanted for only $999.00.  It is just up from the basic unit, as it has a 20 gig hard drive, DVD/CDRW, 128 megs of ram, and a 12” screen.

Before I get into the real meat of this review, let me briefly explain my relationship with the Apple computers.  I’ve had several older models over the years.  They’ve always seemed very exclusive in operation and compatibility.  I was never really impressed with there usability or stability either, and found them just arduous.

There seems to have been a shift in both the Windows and Macintosh platforms.  The same complaint regarding stability with Windows was basically resolved with Windows XP.  Apple’s woes have been solved with their new operating system OS X.  My other complaints of exclusivity have also been greatly addressed with the new update to OS X called Jaguar.  Not only is my little iBook stable while doing several things, it connected seamlessly with my Windows Peer to Peer network and I was able to retrieve files from my shared volume on my Windows XP desktop.  I even opened and used Word XP files, Excel XP files as well as moved all my MP3s so that I can use iTunes.  I’ve even plugged in my USB Logitech mouse, Maxtor External 40 Gig Hard Drive, and Olympus Digital Camera and everything worked great.

So what about the speed and hardware?  The speed is a little pokey, but it is only a 700MHz processor and all my other computers are 1.5GHz or better so I’m sure that it is relative.  It keeps up ok.  I’m sure that another 128 megs or more of RAM would make a big difference.

The physical look of the hardware is beyond elegant. From my perspective,  Apple has always been more about look than function.  With this product they have achieved both in my opinion.  There are a few things that I’m not thrilled with. The 12’ screen is just too small for 1024x768 resolution, yet all the applications need to be run at that resolution.  AND WHERE IS THE RIGHT MOUSE BUTTON????  I mean come on. How hard is it to add a second button to the touchpad?  When my mouse was plugged in, OS X used my right mouse button.  Why don’t they add one to the built in touchpad.  And all that elegance comes at a price.  When you consider the Toshiba I just bought had a bigger hard drive, 15” screen, floppy, was more than twice as fast, had twice the ram, all for the same price, my choice is still to stick with the PC.

My final opinion is that Apple has come a long way in making their products more globally friendly.  They’ve always been the “snobs” of the computer world not wanting to share their toys or play with others.  Now that seems to have changed.  I really like this little notebook and would not hesitate to recommend it to someone that just wanted a simple computer to surf the web, send emails, write letters, etc.  I may even recommend it over a PC just because it is so small, light, easy to use, and has a great battery.  But for me it is just another tool in my toolbox.  I’m in the process of using it for some video editing, photo, and audio needs.  I’ll compare it to doing the work on a PC in next month’s product review.

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