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Apple PowerBook Laptop 15" M9422LL/A Review from Francesco Scinico. This is THE Laptop, I’ve had this computer for almost three months now. I upgraded to the 128MB videocard and 1GB ram. I also installed Abobe Creative Suite CS, Office 2004 for Mac, Virtual PC 6 with Win2000 and Red Hat Linux, and Macromedia Stdio 2004. I also have lots of IBM-made Windows XP Pro laptops and workstations. Windows XP drives me nuts most of the times. As an Italian, I do appreciate beauty and aesthetics, and I certainly agree with Steve Jobs when he says about Microsoft, "They have no taste." When you compare the elegance of MacOS with WinXP, it’s like comparing a Michelangelo painting with a six-year old kid’s drawing. And I won’t even mention the beauty of the machine itself or even the attention to details in the packaging of the unit.

The OS is rock-solid. I may have Photoshop, InDesign, Dreamweaver, iPhoto open at the same time, and the OS hums through all that like a Lexus at 65mph on the I5. This my not be the fastest PC out there, but it certainly does not feel any slower than my 3.0GHz, 1GB, 80GB, 7200rpm IBM intellistation. It is surely more stable though (and quieter too). The thing is, this machine, unlike a Windows box, does not require a Norton or McAfee Internet security suite to bog down your system resurces. To give you an example, my virtualPC win2000 was fine until I installed McAfee Internet security suite, which slowed it down a bit (well, maybe five bits). It is actually amusing to use virtual Win2000 on top of MacOS. When you see the sloppines of Windows-based programs, unwanted balloon tips popping up all the time bragging about the new exciting features of the OS or warning you about a new virus and so forth, it is a pleasure to go back to Mac OS and just do whatever you need to do with ease. The Apple Mail program has a better spam filter than Outlook on my IBM. The machine goes to sleep in one second and wakes up from sleep in two seconds, and even when on, it’s whisper quiet. When the processor is working at full blast, you can hear the noise, but it’s still much quieter than my IBM Boeing-747-take-off kind of noise. Safari is fast and reliable, iLife is a pleasure to use, when inserting a previously seen – but unfinished – DVD into the slot, the DVD player asks you whether you want to start watching the movie from the beginning or from where you left off. Isn’t that what every DVD player on the planet should do? Yet, not only do Windows-based DVD player not do that, they either have some of the ugliest interfaces in the software world (WinDVD) or install a lot of crapware on your system that makes ad windows pop up all the time (real player). Mac OS never crashed in three months of intensive use, nor did the applications, with the exception of Word 2004 (it does it all the time when selecting Italian as the language in the TOOLS menu… maybe Bill Gates does not like Italy) and iPhoto once.

Switching from Windows to Mac was a walk in the park, I think I took 10 minutes to figure out the big picture, and one day to master it at an intermediate level. if you are a developer, you’ll love the xCode and python programs too. They come free with the machine.

The machine is not perfect, though; hence only four stars. Text looks crisper to me in Win XP than it does in Mac OS, even though Microsoft drives me nuts with its persistence in using small size fonts in this day and age. Sure, I know i can select extra large fonts in Display Panel, and I can change font size within specific applications, but it’s still a pain in the rear and time consuming. Fonts on the Mac are already of the perfect size (Apple, unlike MS, seems to grasp the concept that we are not using 640×480 screens anymore) and a pleasure to read, even though they could be a bit crisper (that could be a subjective thing, though. Some people swear by the smoothness of Mac fonts…). BTW, you will have to know how to set up the Clear Font option in Win XP because it’s not active by default, which makes text in Win XP horrible. Again, what is Microsoft thinking? Sloppy people. The second complaint about this powerbook is relative to the lid hatch that lets the lid pop open sometimes. I know there’s a DIY way of fixing it. I just didn’t go the Apple discussion board yet, to read how to implement it. overall, unless you are into gaming, you should definetly ditch Windows in favor of Mac OS. It will be like leaving the Venetian casino in Vegas and going to Piazza San Marco in Venice. When you see the real thing, you will be asking yourself, "Why was I at the Venetian in the first place?"

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