First Apple in a long time, and not the last.
Pros:
Easy, obvious, pleasing interface. Superb stable operation. Interfaces well on networks with PCs.
Cons:
Gets a little warm. Dimmed screen is really dim. Would have liked a wide-screen.
The Bottom Line:
Absolutely sold. I believe I am a permanent convert to Apple.
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Overall Rating:
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Author's Review
The Apple G4 was acquired as a late return to Apple. Having lived through many iterations of Windows OSs, working through communication and network settings, and becoming more familiar than I would like with manual changes to system files, I thought the Mac would be easier, more straightforward, and user-friendly. I was not disappointed.
As a professional writer and speaker, I do mostly word processing, presentation, and internet access with a limited amount of audio listening, web-authoring, and gaming. For my applications, a the iBook was perfect. The interface is obvious and user-friendly. No manual is needed. I loaded OpenOffice (free) and Mozilla (also free) and was off to the races. Note that you have to activate the X-window system (X11) for OpenOffice.
The highlight was the keyboard. This is the best keyboard on a laptop I have had in some time. The scalloped keys give a good feel for the fast touch-typist. The screen was clear and even fonts zoomed small were easy to read. My recent computers have all been widescreens, and I would recommend that for those who want simultaneous display of reference information and working documents - the normal-aspect screen was a slight disappointment. The bottom of the iBook became warm with intensive use, though not when doing only word processing with power-saving features engaged. Battery life was excellent - up to 6 hours in my hands - though the dimmed display was hard to see in a bright environment. Intensive applications such as audio or image handling killed the battery life. Conversion of WMA files to MP3s with an inexpensive downloadable program - EasyWMA - was seemless and perfect.
The iBook perfectly connected to the wired and wireless Cisco networks at home and work, with ease of sharing documents. The Apple and the HP and Sony computers could easily see each other (providing the iBook firewall was not in stealth mode).
Last but not least, use of iTunes made me a convert. Now I have iTunes for media management on my PCs.
