IBM PowerPC 604 112 MHz processor board

Advantages: Easy to maintain, cheap, good support, well featured, stable, user friendly, good battery life it works!
Disadvantages: Already replaced, quite heavy despite size, not as flexible or as well supported as a PC, not that expandable

...of the original iMacs where it angrily sucks in your disc. Simply, the lines are sharp and clean and bright. However, that poses several problems, especially with this 14" model. The first is the fact that the laptop gets very dirty, very quickly. Scratches and finger prints become glaringly obvious on the beautiful case. At least with an ugly Dell or blocky IBM all of that was camouflaged. With this, all your sweat that you have created whilst typing lingers. It might make you satisfied that you worked hard, but when the white turns grey you won't be so chuffed with your work. Secondly, the edge of the laptop will cut against your wrists as you type which can get very very uncomfortable. The System: 933Mhz G4 processor - good enough for everyday use. 384Mb is my recommended minimum memory. 9200 ATI radeon GPU -not bad for office tasks... Read review

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Advantages: IBM reputation, support, quality, Duron CPU, 200Mhz motherboard, 4X AGP slot, software package
Disadvantages: No matter how much you dislike to be seen in Comet, I think they are the only ones selling it. No paper manuals

...to my older Celeron 366Mhz on a 66Mhz motherboard, UDMA 33 with PC 66Mhz RAM. I sloted in an extra 128Mb of RAM and it felt even faster. I'd say put in more RAM if you a bit more punch, - as I suspect Windows ME's overhead is quite great compared to 98. UPGRADE: > I also put in a 46 Gb IBM UDMA 100 7200 rpm hard disk (although the controller only goes to UDMA66) which also speeds things up over the original 5600 RPM hard disk. My total extra expenditure on RAM and HD was £40 + £129 = £169 bringing my total cost to £544 total. So now I have 192Mb RAM and 56Mb of hard disk, with additional scope later to add a real powerful 4X AGP graphics card (which you cannot do with integrated on board video. The motherboard can supposedly support Duron CPU's up to 1 Gig, so when the time comes for another speed boast, there is provision to slot... Read review

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Advantages: Good extra features. Can play CD's from keyboard
Disadvantages: Price?

.... This is to put your PC to “sleep” if it’s so configured. Also on top, there’s a blue “Help” button, which apes the F1 function, which must lie at least a foot away on the left! Down the right-hand side is a row of 4 short-cut buttons, which can be pre-programmed to load software of your choice. IBM have printed an insert for you, on the assumption that word-processor, spreadsheet and internet access are going to be the big three, within one other blank, which I have taken to be my Quicken banking software. Notwithstanding IBM’s printed label, there is nothing to stop you programming all four yourself. The software to configure your board comes on CD-ROM and is easy to install. It adds another icon within Control Panel, which I feel is the best place for it. Now comes the “pièce de résistance... Read review

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