Apple Powerbook

The Apple PowerBook is Apple Computer's luxury portable computer line. One recent rollout is the Titanium PowerBook G4, a slim, elegant piece of equipment with a 15.2 inch screen and an excellently calibrated display. The entry-level PowerBook G4 comes with a 667 MHz processor and a 30 GB hard drive. You get 256 MB of RAM standard, but you might want to upgrade to 512 MB of RAM.

The top-of-the-line PowerBook G4, on the other hand, comes with a 800 MHz Pentium IV processor, a 40 GB hard drive, and a WiFi card. All PowerBook G4s come standard with both a touchpad and a mouse button for easy ergonomics. You can configure your PowerBooks to get precision hardware, but Apple doesn't offer nearly the customization options of Dell or Gateway.

When suped up, the Apple PowerBook G4 can actually be a replacement for a desktop. You get an amazing screen resolution of 1280 X 1050 pixels. You also get an ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 graphics chip, which is supported by 32 MB of RAM. The difference between the 667 MHz and 800 MHz processors may not be detectable until you're running large programs, like Adobe Photoshop.

These laptops offer decent battery life; you get about two hours of heavy use or five hours of light use. You can purchase an additional lithium battery, or you can downgrade to the 14.1 PowerBook, which gets far better battery life than either of these models. The PowerBook G4 comes with a diverse array of slots, including a FireWire port, two USB connections, an S-video connection, and a modem.