Average User Rating:  80% (2 ratings)

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Company: Apple Computers
PRICE: £1779 (£1514 ex VAT) + 1.83GHz model £1429 (£1216.17 ex VAT)

We're sure the key application for the iSight in the MacBook Pro will be iChat and the ability to easily video-conference with other Mac users anywhere in the world. However, we were much more interested in being able to instantly create warped pictures of ourselves and share them around the office.

Novelties aside, there's a great deal to like about the MacBook Pro. The PowerBook G4 was showing its age more than any other Mac in the range. IBM's inability to make a G5 chip that ran cool enough to work in a laptop meant Apple's professional portable range was painfully underpowered in comparison with its PC competitors. Not anymore. Intel's Core Duo has put an end to that, and this 2GHz model is a match for anything in the Windows world.

It showed a staggering improvement on the most recent 15in PowerBook G4 in our tests. We put it through its paces in two tests designed to stress the processor and show us just how much more the Intel Core Duo has to offer than the geriatric G4. As you can see from our graph, the results show the difference between the two machines to be of a magnitude much greater than the 'four times faster' quoted by Apple. However, these tests are very heavily focused on the processor. In everyday work, the performance is governed by a host of factors such as disk speed, graphics power and installed RAM. Also, these tests used applications that run natively on Intel processors. Most Mac OS X applications will run under emulation in Rosetta, and so won't benefit much, if at all, from the faster processor. However, it's an excellent indicator of why the move to Intel was a smart one for Apple.

Other tests didn't show results quite as impressive as our video encoding results. Ripping a CD in iTunes, for example, showed an improvement of less than 50%. As such, the benefits you'll experience very much depends on the work you do. However, if you spend time crunching video files, prepare to be amazed.

So what else does the MacBook Pro have to offer besides a huge performance leap? Not a great deal, but what there is is beautifully implemented. Anyone who was expecting Apple to take the opportunity presented by a brand-new processor and name to redesign the case will be disappointed. We suspect that this may be a temporary state of affairs. Although the PowerBook was radically re-designed to coincide with the transition from the G3 to the G4, when it leapt from PowerPC 604 to G3, the case had to wait until the second wave of machines before it adopted that iconic black clamshell design. We're hoping Apple's product design team was caught on the hop by the early availability of processors from Intel and that Apple's marketers deemed it more important to get the product out than wait for a new shell design. If that's the case, we can expect to see a brand-new MacBook Pro later in the year.

The only noticeable differences in the case of this MacBook Pro are the iSight camera, an infrared receiver for the included Apple remote control, and the new power adaptor connector that accommodates the MagSafe plug. The MagSafe connector is yet another example of Apple's attention to detail. Whereas most manufacturers see the power adaptor as a necessary evil, Apple regards it as a place to add value. So we have a connector held in by a magnet, which means that if the cable is yanked at an angle, the plug falls easily out and the MacBook Pro doesn't land on the floor. Try and pull it out straight however, and it's as tough as a regular plug. There's also a tiny LED on the plug that glows green when the MacBook is connected and fully charged and red when it's charging.

The iSight camera is tiny and positioned in the centre of the lid, above the screen. It's switched off most of the time, but fire up PhotoBooth or iChat and it turns itself on and the LED beside the lens glows green.

A detailed look at the MacBook Pro's specifications is revealing, particularly when you compare them with the 15in PowerBook G4. For example, both the FireWire 800 and S-Video ports on the PowerBook have been dropped and the 8x SuperDrive has been swapped for a 4x model. The PC card slot has been replaced by an ExpressCard/ 34 slot, for which there are currently very few peripherals. Also gone is the 56K V.92 modem, which is now an optional extra. The base RAM configuration is 1GB on this 2GHz model, and the hard drive capacity has been bumped up to 100GB, and is now a SATA drive, but still rated at 5400rpm.

The MacBook Pro's graphics are driven by an ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 with 256MB of RAM. Connection to the outside world is taken care of by Gigabit Ethernet, AirPort Extreme and Bluetooth 2+EDR.

Much has been made of the lack of a built-in modem, which is still useful for hooking up to a hotel Internet connection, and of the removal of the FireWire 800 slot, which seems to indicate that particular brand of FireWire has fallen out of favour at Apple. At least you could make a case for those omissions on the grounds that relatively few people used them. You could also, at a stretch, make a case for the replacement of the PC Card slot as Apple leading the move to a new technology, in the same way it did with USB and FireWire, although that will be little consolation if you have PC Cards that you use regularly. What's more mystifying, and disappointing, is the replacement of the 8x SuperDrive with a slower model.

We're often wary of first-generation models in a new product line, although there's nothing to suggest any problems with the MacBook Pro: it performed admirably in our tests. There are, however, elements of the MacBook Pro that make it feel as though it was rushed out to take advantage of the earlier-than-expected availability of the Intel Core Duo processor. Nevertheless, that was a wise move on Apple's part, as there's more pent-up demand for this product than possibly any other in the history of the company.

Many PowerBook G4 owners have been waiting two-and-half years for a faster professional laptop from Apple. Now they've got it. As our tests results show, there are some huge performance differences between the MacBook Pro and the last 15in PowerBook G4 in terms of the new processor speed. If you're one of that group of ageing PowerBook owners, then there's good reason to jump at the chance to own the latest professional Mac laptop.

However, if you can wait, your patience may be rewarded. There's still a great deal of bedding in to be done with regards to Mac OS X and Intel, not least in the migration of heavyweight apps from Adobe and Microsoft to Universal Binary. And with most of the Mac line - including the consumer laptop range - yet to make the transition, you may be spoilt for choice in a few months' time.

Review By Kenny Hemphill, PC PRO magazine © Dennis Publishing Limited licensed by Felden