*** From the Archives ***

This article is from June 27, 2001, and is no longer current.

The Creative Toolbox: iBook Dual USB, iGotta Have It

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About a year ago I found myself steadily writing and faced with an hour commute into the city via train. Faced with two otherwise idle hours of free time, I set out to find a truly mobile notebook I could use to write my articles and do some graphics work. Having a powerful G4 Cube at home, I really just needed a satellite system. It had to be small, light, cheap, and a Macintosh.

This vision quest of mine turned into a wild-goose chase. I first snagged a PowerBook 2400c off eBay. Sure it was a few years old but it was the lightest PowerBook that Apple ever made, and it was relatively cheap. But then I started to long for the USB and FireWire support, AirPort feature, and DVD playback being offered by the new models. When prices dropped on the PowerBook G3 models, I bit the bullet and bought one, but ultimately I was still unhappy. The PowerBook G3 ended up being too big and a bit heavy for my tastes. What I so desperately wanted was for Apple to reinvent its sub-notebook of years past, and even the PowerBook G4 that was soon to emerge wasn’t quite it: Apple made a concerted effort to make the PowerBook G4 thin and somewhat light, but it was just too powerful and therefore too expensive for my needs. I almost gave up all hope.

Then, on May 1, 2001, everything changed: Apple introduced the new iBook.


The 2001 Apple iBook.

The latest iBook answers many of my hopes for a new sub-notebook Mac. It also confirms the design direction Apple has decidedly taken with its current product offerings, focusing on designs that are sleek, elegant, and futuristic.

There may be few people who mourn the death of the original iMac-like iBook, but I doubt anyone will miss its weight and bulkiness, or its relatively small viewable screen area. The iBook Dual USB improves on all these limitations while keeping the prices intact: The list price with 128MB of RAM and a DVD-ROM drive, for example, is only $1,499.

The new iBook stylings have little in common with those of the old. Instead of the less-than-subtle colors adorning the former iBooks, we are presented with a system almost devoid of color. The iBook seems to take more of a visual cue from the the highly popular Titanium PowerBook G4. And what lies underneath the hood is just as attractive as its white polycarbonate shell. (For photos comparing the 2400 with the iBook, click here

Basics
The form factor, mix of materials, and a crisp 1024-by-768 12.1-inch display make this notebook so enticing that I found myself just wanting to pick it up and use it.

Measuring just more than a letter-size piece of paper, the iBook manages to be unobtrusive and eye-grabbing at the same time. Unlike its predecessor with its rainbow of look-at-me colors, the white polycarbonate surface helps to exude a quiet, space-age sophistication. And while the iBook is asleep, an eerie blue light breathes through the magnesium frame, adding to the whole effect. The surface is very shiny and does pick up smudges and fingerprints, but I find it’s less noticeable on white than with the black case of the PowerBook G3 or the titanium of the PowerBook G4. And the liquid-looking shell cleans up easily with a soft cloth.


The new iBook is in danger of being lost under the mail.

All the connectivity ports can be found on the left side of the iBook, and the small power adapter port is located on the upper right side. The power adapter is the same round yo-yo type that has been around for some time and uses the same smaller AC plug as the PowerBook G4, though it doesn’t seem to securely fit into the port. Adjacent to the power port is an optical-media drive. You have a choice of either a CD-R, a DVD-ROM, or a Combo CD-R/DVD-ROM drive. The DVD-ROM drive looks and feels very much like the flimsy older optical drives found in the PowerBook G3, older iBooks, and iMacs, but it lacks a manual eject button on the drive door. Instead, Apple has dedicated the F12 key to this task. A slot-loading media drive might have been more in line with the iBook’s chic and sleek presentation.

Connectivity and Expansion
The defining role of the iBook is to get users on the Internet and handle the basic tasks a computer should, but to do so without providing the high-performance hardware and higher cost of a power user’s system. Fortunately, the iBook Dual USB sacrifices little in expandability or options.


Connectivity galore: Modem, Ethernet, FireWire, USB (two), video, and A/V.

The iBook Dual USB can accommodate a larger hard drive (20GB), an AirPort card, and more RAM — up to 640MB (or 576MB for the CD-ROM/64MB base model). It lacks a PC Card slot, much to the disappointment of many users, especially in the Japanese market where a popular wireless Internet service requires one.


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  • anonymous says:

    A great review since I have to order any Mac stuff by mail without looking/handling it…. thanks

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