ask-mark.com

Mike sent in the following question:

I really prefer the simple, uncluttered look of a G4 Apple laptop; however, I am a Windows user. Does anybody (not even Sony) make a similar appearing laptop with Intel guts? I also prefer the "super drive" for DVD and CD, not the chaep plastic CD burners typical on most laptops.

Read on for my answer. I would have to agree that I have yet to come across as great of a laptop design as Apple has come up with in the G4 PowerBook. This laptop is simply amazing with its sleek steel look, vibrant screen, convenient side ports and slot drives. I would also agree that not even Sony has come up with anything quite as sophisticated and smooth as the PowerBook. Sony does comes close with its A series and K series laptops, but they both still fall short of the simple elegance of the PowerBook. The only other notebooks I might consider would be an Alienware notebook and a Falcon Northwest FragBook, and this is mostly just a fanboy appreciation for the designs that have come out of both Alienware and Falcon Northwest for as long as I can remember. Alienware has three notebooks, and Falcon has their three listed here. There are few truly exceptional features on any of these systems. Sony has always made multimedia-centric machines, both in its laptops and its desktops; Alienware is geared toward gamers, yet is still practical for the office and classroom; and Falcon Northwest definitely has the enthusiast in mind with its automotive-grade paint jobs and aluminum briefcase. All can be had with dual layer and dual format DVD burners and top of the line mobile video and sound, and widescreen LCDs on most. There are plenty of options out there in the PC notebook market, but there is still nothing quite like a PowerBook in terms of its combination of simplicity, power and convenience.

If money were plentiful in purchasing a notebook, I would suggest getting the 15-inch or 17-inch PowerBook with a SuperDrive and installing VirtualPC with Windows XP. You get the best of both worlds, albeit having to sacrifice some performace in Windows while running in a virtual machine. Of course, there is always Linux on the Mac, too. I don’t know much about Linux on the Mac, except that it’s out there. Google will have plenty of resources about Linux on Mac.