With all of the coming and going over the past couple of weeks, I haven't had time to talk about the PowerBook I bought a few weeks ago. The basic review is.. it rocks, but that's not what you were looking for, right?

It turned up the day before I was going to give three days of Ruby on Rails training in London, and I was eager to use it, as the iBook was beginning to lack in the power needed to make rapid presentations and to work all day developing applications. I loaded up all the main applications on it within an hour and was ready to go.

The 17" PowerBook is reasonably large, but not cumbersome. The more time I spend with it, the smaller it seems. Going back to the iBook feels like going back to some sort of miniature toy, but makes me appreciate how amazing the 12" iBook is for its size. In a hotel room or lazing around on the bed, the screen is mega. It still fits in my backpack though (although I put in extra padding now, to be safe) and can be safely lugged around on the train and walking around London. It survived three days of Thameslink with no problems.

Despite the "35% brighter" claims for the 17" screen, it's not amazingly bright. Perhaps the old 17" was a bit dull, but with the iBook and PowerBook side by side, I wouldn't say the PB was much brighter. That aside, the backlight on the keyboard is great. As soon as it gets dark enough, the keyboard glows, making it easy to see. More than that, it's just a cool effect and makes you feel like you've got your money's worth. I guess that's Apple all round!

Given the size of the machine, the way the speakers are built into the sides of the keyboard is pretty cute. It puts out a pretty good sound, especially compared to the iBook or the Mac Mini's internal speakers. You're not going to be listening to much techno on them though.

There's not much I can say about performance yet. I got the 100GB 7200RPM option and bought an extra 1GB of memory to bring it up to 1.5GB, and it just flies. I haven't really "stretched" it much yet, though, and as with any machine it'll have its limits. The graphics are definitely smoother than on my other Macs, with a fullscreen 1680x1050 performing smoothly in every situation, even using Exposé with tons of windows open. I haven't played any games yet though, so it may have its limitations!

All in all, a great purchase, and it gives me a great working experience from the sofa, the desk, or out and about. It gives the desktop power, but in any place you want to be. So, here's to many happy hours working from the sofa, much like I am now :)