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Yes, the toy is a new 15" 1.5MHz G4 PowerBook! This is my first apple and I must say that I’m amazed with the kit. After I got the box I was a bit worried. All manuals were in Dutch, so I was afraid that I got a version with also the Dutch OS X. However during installation of the software, it just asked me in what language I would like to operate. Great! I was worried for nothing.

Although this box is quite expensive, I was surprised by the connectivity. Apple is in all ways ahead of competition. Take the standard connectivity for example:

• Bluetooth
• 56K modem
• Gigabit ethernet
• both USB 2.0 (2x) and FireWire (1x 400 and 1x 800)
• S-Video and DVI instead of 15 pin video
• Airport extreme (WiFi 802.11g)

You see that the ethernet, wifi and video, it’s just a little bit better specs then the competition. Also if you look at the supplied cable, you get an additional DVI to video and telephone cable. The only complaint one could have is the missing infrared port.

The speed of the G4 processor is only 1.5GHz. I have no clue yet how this compares with an Intell P4, 2+ GHz but the system speed feels ok to me.

The size and weight of the PowerBook are probably its best feature. I think it weights half of my Dell Inspiron 5100 so its very portable. Also the power adapter is quite small. Especially if you compare it with the brick that is supplied with the Dell Inspiron 5150!.

The second best feature is probably the backlight on the keyboard. This looks great and is handy if you type in the dark. And— by the way — the keyboard has a nice touch.

There are of course also some disadvantages. It’s not windows so I have to find my way through OS X. Although the keyboard feels very good, the enter key is definately too small as lots of times I hit the “" instead. I have to learn all the short-cut keys. The system has 512MB and that’s installed as 2 x 256MB so there no room left for additional memory unless I remove some.

So my first impression is that it is a nice machin but we’ll have to see how it performs in the future…