Laptops

Apple PowerBook G4

You have heard of 17 inch monitor for desktop but 17 TFT inch screen for a laptop is really daring move for Apple. It is Apple PowerBook G4 that makes this daring move. It is one of the powerful machines. It is one of the slim and light weighted models available in the market. It is really a power book to be called so. If you don’t mind Mac OS then it is the ultimate choice.

PowerBook G4 has just not looks solid and strong with its aluminum alloy casing. It is amazingly light 6.9 pounds which is almost 2 pounds less than any other17 inch laptop. It managed to remain light because it does not include few things like TV tuner card, limits itself with just 2 USB ports where as 4 USB ports is considered needed normal for PCs. Fortunately, they have included card slot, analog/digital audio input and output, FireWire, 56kbps modem, VGA, DVI, composite video, 10/100/1000 Ethernet and single layer DVD burner. Other cool features include built in camera and light sensor that is ambient sensitive – it is automatically triggered in low lighting. The screen is 46% brighter with acute resolution of 1680×1050 pixels. Simply brilliant to work with graphics, surfing and watching movies.

Keys of 17 inch G4 has ergonomically comfortable rounded keys. The touch pad is really cool with its two finger scrolling taking care of both vertical scrolling and horizontal scrolling. Vertical scrolling is really handy – normally those who buy laptops and notebooks almost by default buy a mouse or eventually buy one because of the difficulty involved in accessing laptop functions – but with G4 touchpad you will realize how fast you got used to the touch pad.

The pack includes powerful Mac OS X called Tiger, iLife05 to manage photos, videos and music. Not to forget Mac QuickBooks, Art Directors’ toolkit and OmniOutliner.

Other hardware configuration includes 1.67 GHz G4 processor, 128 MB graphics card, 512 MB PC2-4200 DDR2 SDRAM, 120 GB massive hard drive, ATI Mobility Radeon. The unit is protected by sudden motion sensor technology that prevents the drive from spinning when it senses imminent damage. You can upgrade your RAM up to a maximum of 2GB. In spite of this winning combination of hardware configuration the system seems to be slow and is not good for higher end graphic gaming. Like all other latest laptops and notebooks G4 too does not have a floppy drive.

It has built in audio speakers and the sound quality is admirable. Other built in devices include Bluetooth and wireless LAN antenna.

Battery performance is something G4 can boast off. Under optimal conditions it offer an easy 5.5 hours and with your DVD player on you can get up to 3.6 hours.

You get your regular one year warranty along with 90 days technical support.

Acer Travelmate c200

Exclusive sliding track mechanism of Acer TravelMate C200 series Tablet PC - Laptops offers you the luxury of both a notebook and a tablet PC with an easy slide. C200 series has a 12.1 inch XGA (1024 x 768) TFT display, 1 GB Ram, Pentium M760 processor with the processor speed of 2 GHz, a massive 100 GB hard drive and a DVD combo drive. It has latest Bluetooth connectivity, Gigabit Ethernet which is 10 times faster. You can go for fingerprint security model TMC204TMi or non-fingerprint security model TMC203ETCi . The model that comes with fingerprint security comes with two batteries and removable optical drive. The operating system is Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC edition.

We will check out the features of TMC204TMi here. The processor used is Intel® Pentium® M Processor 760 (2MB L2 cache, 2.0GHz, 533MHz FSB); it is 33% faster. To enhance the performance it comes with 1GB SDRAM distributed as two 512 slots. You can upgrade your tablet PC up to an amazing 2GB distributed as two 1GB. It has Bluetooth connectivity, wireless LAN facility and also V.92 modem making it ideal for both office and home use. It comes with DVD writer with modular variable speed drive. Reading speed varies as follows 24xCD-RW, 24xCD-ROM, ,24xCD-R, 8xDVD+R, 8xDVD-R, 8xDVD-ROM, 4xDVD-RW, 2.4xDVD+R (double-layer). The writing speed varies as follows 24xCD-R, 8xDVD+R, 8xDVD-R, 4xDVD+RWm 4xDVD-RW, 2.4xDVD+R (double-layer). 4-in-1card reader increases the scope of the tablet PC making it instantly compatible with your camcorder and digital camera. With the 1.44MB floppy drives becoming obsolete if you still like to use your old collections you can go for the optional USB external floppy drive.

It comes with inbuilt microphone and speakers. Many of the previous models did not include inbuilt microphone. You have greater freedom and throw away the clumsy headsets with microphones. However you also have line-in ports for microphone.

C200 series come with decent software packages including Acer Empowering Techlology, Acer Soft Button, Acer Launch Manager, Cyberlink PowerDVD, Microsoft Reader, Microsoft Windows Journal, Microsoft Experience Tablet PC, Norton Antivirus and NTI CD-Maker. You also get Acer System Recovery CD.

The user interface includes the keyboard with 84 keys with international language support, hotkey controls, numeric keypad, 12 function keys, two Microsoft Windows keys, Windows security key, web browser, email keys as well as programmable easy launch keys. Scroll wheel, trackpoint with buttons. It is infrared enabled and with 3 USB 2 ports. It also has a Firewire1394 port. We are promised a battery time of 5 hours making it travel friendly.

Other exclusive features include finger print security, on-screen user interface, dual data input feature through EMR pen/eraser and keyboard with built in scroll wheel.

It scores high on its neat ergonomics. As a dual tablet cum notebook PC C200 series does extremely well.