First off, let me say, that I came to this laptop from the perspective of a mini tower user. I had previously owned a Bondi-Blue G3 400mz Yosemite. I loved the dependability, durability, serviceability, design, and capabilities of my first Mac.

There is an old standard "What a difference a day makes". How about "What a difference 4 years makes"! I paid $3,000 for what was then the top of the line, plus I then had to order a monitor. And no CD burners were available then.

So let's look at what $1,800 gets you in 2002.

A Jack of All Trades The iBook can handle whatever you throw at it. Surf the internet, edit movies, burn CD's, watch DVD's.

I bought this laptop to use in my business. (Specifically I needed it to take a class in the Homeworks Interactive Software). It was a completely logical decision born out of necessity. The fun quotient of owning a laptop took me completely by surprise! Within 1 month I was head over heels in love with this little beauty. If you don't have an absolute ball, with this machine, going on the internet, on the road, playing games while waiting for a plane in a foreign country, bringing your favorite music with you wherever you go while watching the graphics display, looking at DVD movies in bed while listening to the movie soundtrack played out over your full sized stereo system, then you need to have someone hold a mirror under your nose to see if it fogs!

OK, lets get down to specifics.

The Display: Nice and large for watching DVD's or throwing catalogues up on the screen. Hey, I'm not a kid anymore and large print is definitely the order of the day! This screen allows you to do large! How about brightness? Two buttons at the top of the keyboard allow you to adjust the screen from pitch dark (great for preserving batteries while listening to music or a previously recorded internet radio show) to moderately bright, to sunburn level! As for sharpness and contrast, everyone that I show it to is extremely impressed with the iBook's display.

You're Well Connected The iBook offers a modem, ethernet, firewire, USB, video-out, and audio out ports.

Hard Drive: At 30 gigs these days, it is best described as adequate in size, but not alot if you start fooling around with video. It's speed is very quick to my perception, and fairly quiet. If you are very much the video person, plan on getting an additional external hard drive.

Running Temperature: Pleasantly warm in the winter, if you're really doing processor intensive tasks such as DVDs or Games.

Keyboard: At first I thought that I'd never get used to the smaller size, but all in all, Apple has given us a comfortable board with a nice touch. Also some convenient function keys along the top. Sound up & down, ditto brightness, eject, number lock, and more. Once you get used to it , you really don't feel at all deprived or cramped. Nice quality feel to the keys.

Serviceability: Everything is below the keyboard. There is no reason (if you are a moderately careful, capable person), why you can't do your RAM addition, and Airport card yourself. I did it slow and careful, but in my opinion it was relatively easy, and a tremendous amount of fun.

Speakers: Extremely tiny and tinny. For best results get a very good pair of headphones. This is a unit that can make use of a very fine pair.

Stereo Reproduction: Superb, wonderful, magnificent!!!! I am a sound person, and I must say that the hardware (amplifiers) and software in this unit were a total shock to me !!!!!!! When I'm home, I listen to DVD movies and CDs by running a connection from the iBook to my 100 watt per channel (RMS) full size system . The first time I set this up and listened, I was just flabbergasted. I never expected Apple to throw in a top quality pre-amp for virtually nothing. $1,800? In the audiophile business, you could easily pay that much alone for a pre-amp. The improvement in sound reproduction between this unit and my 4 year old mini-tower G3 is staggering! On the road with a high quality set of earphones, it is still very impressive.

A Winning Combination The Combo-Drive allows you to Read and Write CD's as well as play DVD's.

Combo drive: Music CDs play back with no distortion whatever. DVDs play back well, but with a hiccup once or twice per movie. I do not know whether the source of this is an imperfectly recorded CD or in my computer, but overall I still enjoy viewing movies very much. Movie soundtrack reproduction is, once again, superb. Burning Quicktime Movies: I looked all through 2 books for how-to instructions and after giving up hope of finding them, as a last resort, tried the simplest approach. Drag and drop. Bless Macs! This incredibly simple procedure, turned the trick. Actually this prepares the computer memory for burning. To actually burn the CD you have to drag and drop the Disk icon to the trash! This works if you have Quicktime 6 Pro (A steal at $30). Just think "Burn the trash ", and you'll always remember the concept. Not logical, but I never argue with what works. The Results were flawless, first time every time.

By the way, as long as we're on the subject of sound, do you have any favorite old LP's, that you'd like to record into i-Tunes? Griffin Technology offers a $35 mic in attachment that plugs into one of your usb sockets and some free software to optimize it for LP's. The Software is called Final Vinyl.

Overall Speed: When I first got this unit, I was a bit disappointed. I thought it was a processor issue, but now I know better. It is said that you can run OS X on 128MB. My unit came with 256MB (supposedly more than enough). After using my computer for 1-1/2 months, I went back to the Apple store, and bought an extra 500MB chip. IF I hadn't put the ram in myself, I would have sworn, that someone switched computers on me! My perception was that the laptop was running 3 times as fast! RAM is like money, you can't have too much!!!! I could have bought my RAM over the internet for much less, but had had an unsatisfactory experience doing that in the past with my mini-tower G3 . The Apple RAM wasn't cheap, but it was definitely top quality! I'm looking forward to trying Jaguar. It reportedly increases the speed even more.

Battery Life: You ask me how long do they last, I ask you what is your task. If you're doing word processing, I would estimate that the battery lasts about 4-1/2 hours. If you're playing Diemos Rising (Watch out it's addictive) I would guess about 2-1/2 hours. Diemos has very nice graphics and does tend to warm the bottom of the laptop. As far as the advertised 6 hour battery life, perhaps in an alternate universe. When I travel with this, I tend to take my transformers with me (one for 120 volt sockets (included with your original purchase) and one for my car and plane). This extends the usability of my laptop indefinitely. I also bought an extra battery, so I'm prepared for any eventuality. Am I on a plane with no computer connections? The extra battery will see me through. In an all day class with no convenient sockets? NO PROB! I love the feeling of independence this gives me.

Hit Me With Your Best Shot An impact-resistant poly carbonate plastic case and a sturdy magnesium frame make this a tough notebook to kill.

Durability: This is the pivotal issue that decided my purchase of the iBook, as opposed to the Powerbook. The iBook was designed to be used by school children. Magnesium frame, bulletproof plastic case, hard drive mounted with rubber to insulate against shock, yes they definitely designed it for someone like me. I knew, that on some dark day, when my concentration lagged for a brief moment, that I would drop my computer. Boy do I know me! I left my computer bag unzipped on top of my passenger seat in my van (yes it is nice and high) and opened up my door. Plop! Two and a half feet down right onto a concrete curb !!!! Do I need to say Ouch? Closed it up, brought it inside, pushed the power on button (with severe doubts and misgivings) and guess what? It started up without a hitch! It still opens and closes perfectly and bar a few scratches, it's perfect. Don't try this one at home kids.

And lastly, OS X: I am not anything like a computer genius. My learning curve somewhat resembles a straight line. After 4 years my abilities and knowledge of 8.6 (notice I did make the leap from 8.5) are shall I say un-inspiring. I viewed the prospect of taking on OS X with all the enthusiasm that I would of jousting with a two headed dragon. Imagine my surprise to find out that : it's more logical, easier to learn by far, much more stable, and outright gorgeous! I especially appreciate the automatic memory allocation feature. Finally moving to X was like asking out a beautiful girl after weeks of agonized indecision, only to have her merely smile sweetly , and say "yes".

So, I have to report, that there's a new love in my life. But this time, she's low maintenance.