Apple MacBook 13in review

Apple's laptops have long been the benchmark of portable computing, for style if not performance, and these days they can run Windows Vista too.

The MacBook has now shaken off its white polycarbonate case, which was starting to look a little dated, and taken advantage of the manufacturing techniques pioneered by the iconic MacBook Air to adopt an aluminium 'unibody' enclosure. You really have to lay your own hands on it to get a sense of its sturdiness. (A lower specified white model remains available at £719.)

Since the case is made in one piece, there's no seam around its edge, but Apple has still provided access to the hard disk, battery and memory via removable panels on the base, rather than keeping everything sealed, as in the super-slim Air. This is important, because today's laptop batteries rarely last as long as laptops, and a DIY memory upgrade is also a good - if fiddly - option to keep open.

The screen is still 13.3 inches across, framed with a black border that makes it feel a little small for the case. As with the iMacs, a glossy display is now the only option, so you'll have to contend with reflections in bright environments. The vertical viewing angle is fairly narrow, too, meaning you need to get the screen at the right tilt. But in general the display is vivid and pleasing enough.

The flat keyboard is an acquired taste. The faster model adds a backlight to the keys, handy for use in darkened auditoriums and the like, but light spills around the edges as well as through the key caps, rather spoiling the effect. In better lighting, the backlight switches off in Mac OS X, but stays on at the lowest level in Windows Vista.

The new trackpad is incredibly roomy, and a joy to use in OS X. With no buttons provided, you click by tapping the pad itself (anywhere but its top edge, where it appears to be hinged). Cleverly, a two-fingered tap can effect a right-click, and for the first time the MacBook also understands an expanded range of 'multi-touch' gestures like those on the iPhone, including three and four-fingered gestures for commands such as moving between windows.

In Windows, though, you get unwanted cursor movements when pressing the pad. This is more acute when using the pad of a finger than the tip, but didn't crop up at all in OS X, which suggests someone needs to come up with a software fix.

As with earlier models, you get a built-in iSight webcam, microphone, Ethernet, WiFi (under Apple's AirPort brand) and Bluetooth, along with a less than generous two USB ports. Surprisingly, FireWire, an interface championed by Apple, has been dropped, so this model is useless to anyone needing to import from a MiniDV camcorder.

We tested the 2.4GHz machine; a 2GHz version is also available. Both have a new nVidia GeForce 9400 graphics processor, which won't cope with the latest 3D games but makes older titles possible. More importantly, it provides a boost for everyday graphical effects in the operating system. It performed notably well in our Windows video test.

In heavy use under Windows, the battery lasted only an hour and 22 minutes, rising to three hours and 53 minutes in lighter tasks. This is less than Apple's quoted battery life under Mac OS X.

This is undoubtedly a desirable laptop, but the price looks high, especially as Windows costs extra. The Vista niggles are also frustrating if this will be your main operating system. If you plan to use Mac OS X, and value the street cred of your laptop, you won't be disappointed.

Author: Alan Stonebridge