Best Computer I've Ever Owned

Right out of the box, I was impressed. The sleek, contoured design, with the glossy white finish was simply a sight to behold. I've already turned a few heads sitting in the hallway using this thing.

As soon as I hit the switch, the system was up and running. It was the first time I'd used a mac in about 6 years, but I picked it up right away. That's just how simple and easy this system is. The operating system continues to impress me, even after almost a week of use. Mac OS X is brilliant, just brilliant. I don't think I'll ever go back to windows. I could go on and on about how much better than Windows this OS is. Software installation is a breeze, simply a drag-and-drop process. There's also no registry to screw with, and no DLLs to lose or corrupt. The infamous blue screens of death are unheard of to mac users. This machine is more stable than the lap its sitting in, I'd say. It also recognizes every piece of hardware I throw at it. It picked up my wireless connection with its included wireless adapter right away. I use my printer, and my two button mouse, completely free of drivers, without hassle.

Now, the hardware. The entire system is eerily silent, running fanless most of the time. When the hard drive is acessed, it is barely audible, and when the fan does come on, I barely notice. The included Airport Express card works very well, with good range and reception. The CD-RW/DVD ROM drive is quite nice. It's a slot loading drive, and just sucks up CDs and DVDs. (On a a side note, the drive is quite loud when loading a disk, but its perfectly normal). DVD playback is excellent, no artifacts, or slowdown, or anything. I think the base hardware set is just a tad basic, though, with only a 30GB HDD and 256MB of RAM. 30GB seems like a fair amount, but the preloaded softare (some of which I removed) and the OS take up almost a third of that. The screen is brilliant. It's a standard 1024x768 resolution, but it's bright, crisp, and beautiful.

The system overall is very fast. The 1.2GHz G4 processor is deceptively powerful. The faster processors are lightning fast, but I prefer the slower speed processors, to conserve battery life. Disk access is OK at best, with the hard drive spinning at 4200 RPMs (compared to the 7200, or even 10000 of desktop drives), although the slow speed helps conserve battery power. While the OS is brilliant at memory management, assigning memory only to programs that are being used, rather than just what is open, 256MB is simply not enough, for most any computer these days. While program loadup times are pretty fast, and switching between programs is instantaneous, I notice a lot of slowdown when I start heavy multitasking. Another 256MB stick, which is fairly cheap these days, would remedy that problem.

There's loads of included software on this thing. iLife '05 is included, and it's pretty awesome. You get the famous iTunes, Garage Band, a music recording software (and yet the machine has no line-in mic), iPhoto, iMovie, and iDVD, all for free. There's also AppleWorks, the Mac equivalent of Microsoft Office. Appleworks recognized and converted all my office documents without a hassle, so no problems there. There's also WorldBook encyclopedia, Mail, iSync, Quicktime, and dozens of other things. I found just about all the software to be intuitive, easy, and functional. Safari, the included internet browser, puts Internet Explorer to shame. It's lightning fast, supports tabbed browsing, and has a google search bar built in. The only problem is that most sites are coded for IE, and may not load correctly. And for those, you can use the included IE for mac.

My mobile experience with the iBook was great. Battery life is stellar, approaching 6 hours with light use, and 3 hours 20 minutes with a DVD. The notebook is small, and portable, but its a bit heavier than most 12" notebooks.

The only problems I found with this notebook are pretty minor. I suspect the white finish will loose its lustre and become tarnished after enough heavy use, staining this laptops sheer beauty.

I can't reccomend OS X enough. I would buy a Mac based on that operating system alone. I've owned a 486 with Windows 95, a Celeron with Windows 98, and a Barton 2500 with Windows XP, and I must say, this has been the best computing experience out of decades of using computers at home.

Highly, highly reccomended.