In addition to launching what it called the world's most compact notebook, Apple unveiled the world's largest notebook screen, the 17in Powerbook G4.

This is the first portable computer with a 17in screen, yet it's lighter and thinner than most of its Windows competitors.

At just 2.6cm thick, it's the same as the existing 15in model, and it weighs 3.1kg, which feels quite heavy at first, but considering its size that's very impressive.

The display is the same as that used in the 17in TFT iMac, with a widescreen aspect ratio and a resolution of 1,440 x 900 pixels, giving enough screen real estate for the most demanding professional users.

It's this sector that the 17in Powerbook is targeting, especially those in creative markets such as design, video and audio.

The screen is driven by the top-of-the-range (for the Mac, at least) Nvidia Geforce4 440 Go with 64MB of dedicated DDR memory, which also supports an external display at up to a massive 2,048 x 1,536 resolution.

External displays can be connected through either DVI, VGA, S-Video, or Composite video out (all with a supplied adaptor).

These output methods take up just two of the plethora of ports that sit on both sides of the unit.

There is a USB port on either side, although Apple still uses USB 1.1, rather than the faster USB2.

Instead, there is one FireWire port, and the first ever use of a FireWire 800 port (IEEE1394b) which, as its name suggests offers data connections at up to a blazing 800Mbps, although as yet there are few FireWire 800 peripherals.

There's also audio in and out and a PC Card/Cardbus slot, as well as a modem and Gigabit Ethernet as standard.

Like its 12in little brother, Bluetooth is built in, and the 17in also has wireless networking using the new 802.11g standard.

In common with the 15in model, the 17in Powerbook uses a 1GHz PowerPC G4 processor, but its performance is boosted by a significant redesign of the internal architecture, such that it uses 333MHz DDR memory modules (512MB supplied) and an ATA100 hard drive.

It has a slot-loading Superdrive (DVD-R/CD-RW combo) which, when used with the bundled IDVD software, allows you to create professional-quality video DVDs.

Like the 12in model, the 17in Powerbook is constructed from aluminium, making it more robust and less susceptible to scratches and wear-and-tear than the titanium of yore.

The screen uses the same contour-balanced hinge system, but the 12in model's three-speaker system is replaced by two much larger speakers that take up a significant proportion of the area surrounding the keyboard.

This helps the aesthetics somewhat, since the standard-sized notebook keyboard looks a little lost. It's a shame the keyboard could not have been expanded to fit the available space.

Another touch, unique to the 17in model, is that the keyboard, which in other respects is the same as that on the 12in model, features an ingenious backlight system.

Fibre-optic light sensors, hidden below the speaker grilles, detect ambient light, and illuminate the character on the keyboard when the light falls below a certain level.

The degree of keyboard illumination is inversely proportional to the ambient light, or it can be easily adjusted with two of the F keys.

The light-sensing system also dims the backlight on the computer's screen in dark conditions, which prevents glare and significantly saves battery life. Again this can be easily overriden using F keys.

Despite the large screen, Apple still claims a battery life for this machine of four and a half hours thanks to the use of prismatic battery technology, which allows more crystals to be crammed into the same amount of space.

But as with all notebook batteries, don't take this figure too literally. You will get somewhere approaching four hours of use out it, provided you turn the screen brightness right down and turn off battery-draining features such as wireless networking and Bluetooth.

Details
Price: £2,599 (£2,211.91 ex VAT)
Contact:: Apple, 0800 039 1010
www.apple.com/uk

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