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For six years, the Internet Nexus served as my technology blog, but I've since started blogging at the SuperSite Blog instead. If you're looking for the blog, please head there. --Paul

Monday, May 24, 2004

Apple notebook alert: iBook is a lean, clean machine

Government Computer News: "I’ve been testing the $1,299, 933-MHz midrange model with a 14.1-inch TFT active-matrix display. It has a 40G hard drive and a CD-burning, DVD-reading optical drive. I upgraded the standard 256M of RAM to 640M of double-data-rate synchronous dynamic RAM and added an Apple AirPort Extreme IEEE 802.11b wireless card. Together they raised the price $300 ... The iBook has been a solid performer at a variety of tasks. Using Apple’s Safari browser and sharing a Verizon Wireless digital subscriber line connection via a Cisco Linksys wireless router, I downloaded Web pages as fast as on a hardwired Ethernet. For ordinary e-mail and word processing, the computer felt as fast as any Microsoft Windows notebook I’ve used. PhotoStudio image-editing software from ArcSoft Inc. of Fremont, Calif., did tax the iBook’s 133-MHz system bus and processor, however. Re-rendering a 5-megapixel color photo into 24-bit grayscale took about 10 seconds. If you do a lot of graphics-intensive work, consider Apple’s pricier PowerBooks with more Level 2 cache and beefier graphics subsystems."

Performance is definitely going to be an issue for me. Hmm...

[ Posted at 11:51 PM | Permalink ]