With this new notebook by Apple you can accomplish all of your computing needs wirelessly at a reasonable cost, under $1000. The new iBook G4 is a fast powerful notebook with speeds up to 1.4 GHZ. It has built-in wireless capabilities and a powerful DVD burning drive. The iBook is very impressive with its power and flexibility for everyday work and play. It comes with the complete suite of Apple's iLife 2006 applications. You can also edit and organize your movies and photos while on the go. With the operating system you get Spotlight, the fastest search that lets you find anything as fast as you can type it. The iBook is thin and light with the 12 inch model weighing only 4.9 pounds and the 14 inch model weighing 5.9 pounds.

Included with the new iBook:

• Mac OS X Tiger Operating System
• Built-in wireless with BlueTooth Technology
• up to 1GB DDR RAM
• up to 60 GB Hard Drive
• Combo and SuperDrive DVD and CD-RW drives

Fujitsu has announced that it will be offering a 200GB notebook hard drive in the third quarter of 2006.  This will double the currently available storage limits for laptop computers, which is always a good thing.  (I get antsy and start cleaning stuff out whenever my PowerBook's drive gets down to 10 free gigabytes...)

The 2.5" serial-ATA drive includes hardware acceleration to improve command queueing.  It will be able to handle and reorder up to 32 instructions at a time.  The transfer speed will be 150MB/s and the drive will suck up 1.6 watts of power.  No prices available at this time.  Wonder how soon Apple will be able to get their hands on these and start offering them in the MacBook Pros?

Here's another run of a dual booted WinXP / OSX over at Nirlog.com

He covers the main installation sequence, and notes the few problems he encountered.

Aside from a small hiccup on the partioning, and lack of wireless, everything looks to be up and running with nary a problem.

He follows the Wiki HOWTO, which takes you step by step through the whole process.

Now if there was ever that game you wanted to play, or if your company makes you run Windoze, you can now get away with doing it on your MacBook.

To get started the 1st thing you'll need to do is:

[Download the bootloader]

When Apple announced the MacBook Pro - the Intel-based successor to the PowerBook G4 - I was excited.  Finally a faster pro-level notebook from Apple.  Of all the bells and whistles it presented, I was most in awe of the ingenious MagSafe power connector.  A square magnet to hold the power cord in place?  Beautiful.  I've ruined enough power cords by yanking them out, and my wife's PowerBook was badly dented when a cord got yanked out.  This was the greatest design idea I'd seen in a  long time.

Today however, a flickr photoset shows some disturbing images or a severely burnt MagSafe connector and MacBook Pro port.  I suppose there's potential for this being a hoax, but I don't know the use in something like that.  Go check out the pictures, they look pretty ugly.  I'll just use this as one more reason I don't have to feel bad about not having my own MacBook Pro just yet...

In case the last one didn't extend the battery life on your 15" PowerBook, maybe this one will.  The update should be in your Software Update, but if you want to check manually to see if you're a lucky winner, Apple's provided a page to help. 

Basically, Go to the Apple Menu, and click, "About This Mac". 
Then choose "More Info".

I'm a bag fiend.  I am always on the prowl for a better bag to carry my PowerBook/iPod/whatever and have a graveyard of perfectly good bags to prove it.  Then one day I happened upon bags by Spire USA.  I honestly don't recall how I found them, but I'm eternally glad that I did (as is my wife who doesn't have to listen to any more excuses for new bags laying around the house). 

At the time, I was sporting a 17" PowerBook, and finding a bag to handle my Apple-goodness wasn't easy.  Enter Spire.  Their Endo XL was built for 17" notebooks (of which, the PowerBook was the only one at the time), so I took a closer look.  The materials and build quality were superb, and it could carry my computer with plenty of room to spare for programming books, iPods, cables, and pretty much anything a self-respecting geek could need to lug around.  The icing on the cake was how comfortable it was, even when loaded down with all the crap I deem necessary on a daily basis.  Oh - and the bags even come with hard, padded, removeable sleeves for the notebooks to live in while inside the bag!

I've had the bag for a couple years, and that's a real record for me.  For one, because I haven't found something I've liked better, and two, because it hasn't worn out!  I did have one stitching issue, but under its lifetime warranty, I sent it to the [local] Boulder, CO based headquarters and had it fixed in no time at all. 

Whether you're into messenger-style bags or backpacks, they've got you covered.  So what's your favorite bag?

Over at Arstechnica, Jacqui Cheng has done a nice job of reviewing the MacBook Pro against the PowerBook G4, a Dell Inspiron 9100 running OS X 10.4.4, and a iMac Core Duo in the benchmarks.

It performs amiably against the rest and, there are some surprising results that show up from the Dell. Of course the MacBook Pro wins overall, but never the less it's always interesting to see what comes out of some of the runs.

Add the built in iSight camera, which is great for those that travel, or are abroad. The down side to it is for those in the government that might not be able to take a camera in a secure area. D'oh

Also one of the newest additions is the MagSafe. Basically it's a power cord that connects to the laptop via magnets instead of the your normal plug. Pretty sweet, so say good bye to having your laptop yanked right out of your hands, or off your desk.

Conclusions:

Pros:

Significant speed bump for Apple's pro notebooks
Beautiful, bright display
Built-in iSight
Thinner than G4 predecessor
Dual-link DVI
Cons:
MagSafe comes out way too easily under imperfect conditions
Wider than G4 predecessor
No Firewire 800, only 400
Built-in iSight

The US Patent & Trademark Office recently revealed a new patent from Apple, those wacky little buggers over in Cupertino. The design shows a wider touchpad to be incorporated into its future laptop designs. Among other things, the touchpad is simply a natural extension of the existing touchpad, flowing over into the area usually reserved for resting one's palms or wrists.

If you're not easily scared by detailed descriptions, read the following: "In one embodiment, the wide touchpad filters each contact or contact patch sensed to either accept the contact as an intentional input command (e.g., cursor control command), or reject the contact as unintentional (e.g., when operating as a palm rest). The wide touchpad can filter multiple contact patches in order to accept a particular contact patch in one area of the touchpad while rejecting a second contact patch elsewhere on the wide touchpad. In one embodiment, a sensor is disposed between the keyboard and touchpad. The sensor defines a planar sensing region extending upwards from the top surface of the base assembly. The sensor detects a userÂ?s hand that may be resting on the base assembly with a palm portion making contact with a portion of the wide touchpad and the fingers extending toward keyboard. When this detection is made, any contact made with a corresponding portion of the touchpad is rejected, having been interpreted as unintentional contact by the user. Alternatively, detection of fingers extending toward the keyboard may be evaluated as one of many factors used to decide whether and what significance to accord to contact with the touchpad. For example, other factors may include the profile of the contact with the touchpad, the level of keyboard activity at the time of contact, etc. In this way, the touchpad may effectively serve as a palm rest (e.g., the user may intentionally rest one or more palm or other part of a hand or arm on a portion of the touchpad, which is recognized as an unintentional input) in addition to a functional touchpad when an input is interpreted as being an intentional contact by the user."

Wow. Quite a road from here to 'user-friendly.'