As far as the ScienceMan is concerned, this may be the ultimate teacher machine. The iBook is probably your best choice as a student laptop, considering the great price of that machine. But for a few reasons, the PowerBook is the machine of choice for teachers. Why?

First, there is the incredible screen. Crystal clear and sharp, your eyes will not tire even after many hours of entering marks! The 15.2"size of the screen and it's 1152x768 native resolution provide a wonderfully wide pallete for having multiple applications open and being able to see what you're doing! For example, on my screen below I've got a full page web page, a large Quicktime movie, and an anatomy program open all at the same time, all fully visible.

When you decide you would like to mirror your display for instructional purposes, you have great choices available to you. I was able to easily mirror the display to TV set by using an S-video cable;

When you select video mirroring, your display shows up clearly on the TV set - with one niggly... the aspect ratio of the PowerBook is not supported on TV's so it will shrink the display on the PowerBook to 1024x768 - it's not a big deal, just two small black bands on each side of your computer screen. As soon as you deselect mirroring, the display goes back to normal. If you wish to mirror to a projector, you'll use the provided VGA out port - again, the display will shrink slightly, at least until they come out with projectors that can support the PowerBook's native resolution.

As for the other features of the PowerBook, I could gush for hours. Superfast, supports firewire (great for importing video from digital camcorders), 2 USB ports, very light and has a very cool trackpad that simply blows away the little knobs and weird control devices you find on Wintel laptops, and the keyboard has fullsize keys that have a great typing feel;

The integrated CD/DVD drive works great - nice to have considering the educational DVDs that are on the horizon.

Although the case is pure Titanium, this is not a machine you want to drop! It feels a tad more delicate than it plastic case predecessors, so you may want to treat it appropriately - don't get me wrong - I shoved this one into a backpack already, no problems. But you may want to think twice about picking it up by one corner and shaking it around... that titanium is suprizingly flexible!

ScienceMan gives the Apple G4 PowerBook top marks! Want one of your own? Check out the complete specification page at the Apple site to see if this machine is right for you. Then head over to the Apple store and start begging for money from the administrators!