Start with the display itself, beaming in at 1920 x 1200 pixels.
Add a Pentium 4, a gigabyte of RAM, and ATI's Radeon 9700 graphics
package, and you're ready to blast whole battalions of
3-D baddies
into submission. The speakers are boosted by a subwoofer, and
thanks to all the included software, the 9100 is just the ticket
for anyone editing video or overhauling photos.
Battery life is slender, but you'll have this jewel plugged in most
of the time. Just one word of advice: Don't keep dinner waiting
while you get lost in Battlefield Vietnam or Splinter Cell: Pandora
Tomorrow.
Apple PowerBook G4 17-inch
$2,500,
www.apple.com
Macs may always attract a relatively small minority of buyers, but
that doesn't mean they should be ignored - and nobody's ignoring
the elegant PowerBooks. In fact, numerous players on the PC side of
the aisle have swiped a trick or two from these gorgeous notebooks.
One of the most eye-catching is the large but still sleek-looking
17-inch model, whose 6.9 pounds also makes it one of the lighter
desktop replacement units on the market.
If you're a frequent flyer, you've probably seen PowerBooks draw
envious glances for their incredible screen brightness and the
illuminated characters on the keyboard. No red-eye squinting here.
The AirPort Extreme
wireless networking is also ready for 802.11g,
one of the newer, faster flavors of
Wi-Fi. Among many nice touches,
here's a cool one: An external battery gauge lets you check the
power level without booting up.
Gateway M675X
$1,900,
www.gateway.com
This model is billed as a "desktop replacement," and boy, is it.
It's a hefty 8.8 pounds, for starters, so it's most comfortable in
your home office, but it's also dense with features you'd expect
from a desktop machine. The keyboard is full-size. The 17.1-inch
wide-format screen means you won't have to compromise display-wise.
Likewise in the speed department, thanks to a Pentium 4 processor
and gigabit Ethernet.