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Apple's colorful iBook may look like a Pokemon accessory, but it's not a toy. At $1599 the iBook costs considerably less than Apple's PowerBook G3 (which starts at $2499). Yet the iBook is fairly well equipped, featuring a Motorola PowerPC G3-300 processor, a 12.1-inch active-matrix screen, a 10X-24X CD-ROM drive, a network interface, and a 56-kilobits-per-second modem. And thanks to a wireless networking option, the iBook can easily go where most other PC and Mac notebooks can't: namely, out in the backyard, where you can use it to surf the Web.

However, the iBook suffers from some drawbacks--most notably, a lack of expandability and some minor design flaws--that might make it less than ideal for some users.

Not Much Room to Move

The iBook currently comes in two semitranslucent flavors: tangerine and blueberry. Like the desktop iMac, the iBook relies on USB connectivity for attaching peripherals; unlike the iMac, however, the iBook has only one USB port, and not two. That means the iBook lacks support for PC Card slots, expansion bays, and SCSI--all of which are standard issue on the latest PowerBooks.

If that lack of expandability doesn't pose a major problem for you, the tiny 3.2GB hard disk might. Likewise, the miserly allotment of 32MB of SDRAM inflicts torture on both the iBook and its user. The Mac operating system gobbles up 21MB of memory on its own--even when trimmed of many background system files. If you have only one application open, the system works reasonably well, but start up another and you'll need to count on two hands how many seconds the screen takes to draw when you switch between windows. Thankfully, RAM upgrades require little effort to install; simply lift up the keyboard for easy access to the one open RAM slot (which accepts 32MB, 64MB, or 128MB modules).

The 12.1-inch active-matrix screen shows bright, lusciously saturated colors and sharp text. But the screen's placement calls attention to just how large the iBook's case is. A 2-inch border surrounds the screen, while the entire notebook measures 13.5 by 11.6 by 2 inches. (PC notebook manufacturers can fit a screen of up to 15 inches into a similarly sized unit.) Though the iBook weighs about 7.5 pounds with the AC adapter, its bulk makes it seem heavier.