Also in this issue:

• Drinks
  Cabernet Cult
• Cigar Stars
  The Quiet Man
• Cuba Report
  On the Road to Tobacco Country
• Golf
  Chasing the Dream
• Up Front
  Insights: Investing
• More from this Issue

Laptops of Luxury

Our Nominees for the Portable Computer Haul of Fame

Steve Morgenstern
From the Print Edition:
The Cuba Issue, May/Jun 01

Apple PowerBook G4

The créme de la créme of Apple's portable line, the PowerBook G4 is fast and flashy, clad in a distinctive titanium shell and sporting an unusual wide-screen display.

This is the first portable equipped with Apple's high-end G4 processor, providing the desktop replacement power needed for muscular applications such as gaming and digital video editing. What's going to make people stop and stare, though, is the display, which is 12.5 percent wider than a standard screen. That's still not as wide as a DVD movie in letterbox format, but movies do look great -- and it's fun to feed disks into the slot-loading DVD drive, which sucks in the disk without popping out a tray. What really appeals to me about the display is the ability to simultaneously show two screens of information side-by-side. If I'm doing research on the Internet, I can launch my word processor, open a Web browser right next to it, and cut-and-paste or take notes seamlessly.

Another big plus for the new PowerBook is battery life. Apple claims you'll get up to five hours on a single battery -- you won't (actual battery life never matches manufacturer specs), but its performance is still impressive.

In terms of pure portability, the PowerBook falls somewhere in the middle of the pack at 5.3 pounds -- titanium may be a very lightweight metal, but that big screen adds bulk. On the other hand, if you dig deep for this pricey PowerBook, you're unlikely to need a separate desktop Mac. With built-in everything (including USB and FireWire ports, an external monitor connector and a modem) plus decent speakers and an extraordinary screen, you get a lot of "oooh-ahhh" for the money.

Prices start at $2,599; www.apple.com, 1-800-692-7753

Steve Morgenstern writes regularly for Cigar Aficionado on
technology issues.

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