Apple MacBook review

We haven't been reviewing Macs for all that long and we still approach them with wariness and caution - like cavemen confronted by a suspicious monolith. In the case of Apple's new 13in MacBook, however, our reserve didn't take long to crack.

We'll start with design. Yes, we know everyone goes on about how nicely designed Macs are, yada, yada, yada. But the thing is, it's true. This MacBook is finished in a matt-black, rather than the traditional white. There are no unnecessary lines, flaps, switches or other design features anywhere on the laptop - only smooth, unbroken lines. All the ports are on the left-hand side. The DVD writer is a slot-loading drive, so there isn't even a disc tray to disrupt the harmony of the design. It's a shame that the MacBook doesn't have a PC Card slot, though. Okay, it would have detracted slightly from the smooth, uncluttered look, but it would have made it possible to add devices such as high-end sound or video-capture cards. The only thing that really got on our nerves was how easily the otherwise beautiful finish picked up fingerprints, so make sure you have a dry cloth in your laptop bag to keep your MacBook looking pristine.

Spaced out

The keyboard, at first glance, looks rather old-fashioned. The keys are large, with rounded corners, and there's lots of space around each key. But we were quickly won over - the well-spaced keys made typing easy and kept fat-fingered errors to a minimum. We were also impressed to discover that Apple has added a means of 'right-clicking'. You simply place two fingers on the trackpad while clicking. Where though, is the [Del] key? Apple doesn't seem to have put one on this keyboard, which is quite frustrating.

Speed demon

Don't think, however, that this laptop is all looks and no substance. We couldn't benchmark it using the Mac OS X because our benchmarks run only under Windows. So using Apple's Boot Camp software, we installed Windows XP. As you'd expect of a laptop with a 2GHz dual-core processor and 1GB of RAM, the MacBook achieved a respectable score of 119%. That's faster than our dual-core benchmark PC. Just don't expect to play any games - the MacBook's graphics chip was too slow to run our gaming benchmark.

We were also pleasantly surprised at how easy Mac OS X was to use. During the several days we used the MacBook, we attached it to our wireless network, installed several applications, changed the default program for certain file types, connected to network-attached storage and much more, without encountering any problems.

The MacBook also comes with a remote control that operates Front Row, Apple's Media Center clone, to give you quick and easy access to videos, music and photos. The system is easy to use and worked well, we liked it a lot.

As you've probably gathered, with just a few reservations, we loved the MacBook. It's stylish, powerful, easy to use and isn't much more expensive than a similar Windows laptop.