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Life with only a Notebooks, PC or Mac?
Part 1, mid-market class
Hewlett-Packard
ze5000, cont'd.
Rated very highly by our “Test Typist” reviewer, the keyboard
is one of the best you’ll find on any Notebook. She also found
1400x1050 to be difficult to read the tiny text while typing in Word
and deciphering the menus in the all applications.
Conclusion:
The HP ze5000 is up to most of the challenges a mid-market class Desktop
replacement Notebooks needs to have in hardware. It will be up to your
personal preferences and tastes to make the final acceptance choice
considering the screen resolution issue.
Apple
14" iBook Combo
The
Apple iBook is easily the best looking of all the mid-market Notebooks
we evaluated, it is in fact an award winning industrial design with
it’s sophisticated and artsy “Ice” opaque polycarbonate
suit that is an abuse resistant external enclosure. When the display
lid is up and the unit is on, the Apple logo even glows through the
white frosty cover .
On anyone’s desk, under your arm or perched on your Flight 19 fold-down tray table, people will always take notice. While the initial attention it draws is from the iBooks clean stunning lines, onlookers quickly notice the incredibly sharp and bright 14.1” TFT display, the absolute best we’ve seen on a mid-market portable. Brightness controls, as well as sound volume are a subset of the F keys, of which there are 12 just like on a PC Notebook.
Speaking of keys, Apple has greatly improved their portable keyboards since the days of the black G3 PowerBooks and “toilet seat” iBooks, which were a bit spongy and lacked much tactile “click” feedback.
This new series of
“ice” iBooks have changed that completely, much to the admiration
of journalists and typists alike. Our
“speedy touch typist” rated the iBook a close second to the
top performer in our mid-market review, the HP ze5000 and tied with the
Gateway 450X.
Another nice feature is the huge and very accurate “Trackpad” (Touchpad) with its equally huge single thumb button. Missing is a scroll wheel, or at least a vertical section on the Trackpad that could act as a scroll section as seen on most PC Notebooks.
Yes, Apple is still obsessed with the persistence in using only one mouse button, which is horribly inefficient in graphics and video editing work. Thank goodness, most of the mouse manufacturers have written software to give us three-button operation and even a scroll wheel for Mac OS 9.x! Much to the surprise of many users, when you plug a three button USB mouse designed for Mac OS X, left and right and scroll wheel functionality is built into OS X! Surprise, surprise as Gomer Pyle used to say.
With OS X (10.2) and its UNIX roots, you get SMB and the ability to talk to any Windows computer and Windows based network, without the need for add-on software as you had to in the past. When will Microsoft drop its embargo against allowing Windows users to easily see and talk to Mac’s on a Network? OS X also now has Bluetooth short-range network technology built in, ahead of MS Windows.
Apple invented WiFi connectivity built into portable computers with the G3 Pismo back in early 2000, and the iBook goes one better with the best internal 802.11 antennas around. We got an astounding 420-foot range inside a concrete and wood framed office, and building between two floors! No other notebook computer came close.
Good things come and go in small packages. If you travel a lot with your Desktop notebook, you already know what a nuisance a huge AC power supply is. Well, the Travel Gods thank Apple for making the smallest completely self-contained AC adaptor which has only one thin CD cord and the 110 VAC prongs built-in! (see the photo)
With the iBook you really do get a bundle, no one equals the package of able software included with most Apple products and the available productive software is quite equal
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