Rating: 
Summary: The best of all worlds
Review: The way I see it, the 867 mhz setup is the optimum macintosh powerbook configuration. Firstly, the speed - more than enough. The difference between 867 and 1 ghz - though 1 ghz is a nicer number - is minute, for a 500 dollar price difference. The DVD/CR-RW drive: while everyone is fawning over Superdrives for the new powerbooks, what they're overlooking is that the CD rewrite speed is actually SLOWER in a superdrive (6x as opposed to 8x). Burning DVDs, of course, is a very cool concept. But the drive itself is an extra 200 dollars, and, in terms of media storage, you simply don't need that much. 700 megabyte CD's go for about a twentieth of the cost of one DVD. So if you're planning on using alternate media to transport data, CDs are cheaper and faster to write with. "But I need to transport my whole hard drive from my powerbook to my new computer." In which case, simply hook up the firewire from your laptop to the computer. Firewire is ridiculously fast. In addition, the DVD drive itself works well, and the CD-R/CD-RW drive is equally easy to use. If you think that buring DVD's is a great alternative to simply buying them, than think again - at least for the meantime. Ripping a DVD is nowhere near the same as ripping a CD, and besides, with most DVD movies nowadays encompassing more than 4.7 gigabytes, you need a high-density (i.e. more expensive) 9.4 gigabyte DVD to rip it onto. If, in all honesty, you need to use your powerbook for creating your own DVD's - which not many people do... but if you're one of them, then god bless - then go for the superdrive. In addition, this model is perhaps the best middle-of-the-road laptop there is. The new 17" laptop starts at 3300. The 12" ones end at 1900. So if you want a 15 inch screen, and the actual titanium casing (the new ones are aluminum), stick with this one. Something else to remember. Macs, as great as they are, tend to be very flawed when they're first released. The original Titanium powerbook took almost three years to perfect (the old DVD drives used to break very easily). The G4 cube didn't even last a year before it was discontinued. The first G4 towers had to take a speed cut (they were supposed to be released 400, 450, and 500mhz models, but instead were 350, 400, and 450). Macintosh OSX was terrible for a year, before 10.1 fixed all the bugs. The original iBook's design had to be revamped within a year (because they looked like toilet seats). Perhaps wait a little before throwing your trust into a brand new design, as neat as it looks. Also, Titanium components themselves are getting much, much less expensive. DDR ram (used in the new laptops... and standing for "Double-Data Rate) is necessary only in very, very high end computing; and, if that doesn't convince you, it costs over twice as much as the TI powerbook's PC-133 RAM, so if you feel like upgrading from 256 to 512, it's going to cost about three times as much to buy one 256 DIMM of DDR-RAM. The overall design of the TI powerbook, after 3 years of remodeling (mostly internal remodeling) is finally at its best. It can handle all games, can upgrade to a lot of RAM inexpensively (and remember, 1 gigabyte of PC-133 RAM is still faster than 512 Megabytes of DDR-RAM), and, most importantly, is very solidly built. The monitors are great-looking, and very high-quality. I would happily buy this again.
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