Apple's new 14-in. iBook; Mostly iLike

Computerworld - For the last year or so, as the feature set in Apple Computer's iBook line has ever so slowly come closer to matching that of the company's high-end PowerBooks, I've debated about which one is the better deal.
Certainly the iBook offers a big bang for the buck -- especially now that the price of the top-of-the-line 14-in.model has been trimmed while new features have been made standard. SuperDrive for burning DVDs and CDs? Check. A half-gigabyte of RAM? Check. Airport wireless card and Bluetooth? Check. Two-finger scrolling TrackPad? Check. Solid-feeling keyboard and luscious LCD screen? Um, well, more about those in a minute.
For the last month or so, I've been using Apple's newest iBook, updated in late July with what another reviewer appropriately dubbed the "kitchen sink" approach. As Apple has approached a ceiling on the speed it can squeeze out of the G4 processor -- an issue that pushed the company into Intel's arms -- it has taken to adding value (see "Apple updates iBook line, Mac Mini").
In this case, that means throwing in everything but the kitchen sink -- giving iBook buyers more for less.
The result is a simplified lineup that now consists of just two iBook models: an entry-level 12-in. version that goes for $999 and the one I have on my desk now, the 14-in. version selling for $1299. The smaller model weighs in at 4.9 lb. and uses a 1.33-GHz G4 chip; Its big brother weighs 5.9 lb. and runs on a marginally faster 1.42-GHz processor. Both now sport ATI Mobility Radeon 9550 video cards but offer the same screen resolutions as their predecessors: 1024 by 768 pixels. The larger iBook has a 60GB hard drive (spinning at 4,200 rpm); the entry model has a 40GB hard drive.
And for Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger fans, I should note that the new ATI card, while offering only 32MB of video RAM, is still powerful enough to smoothly show off the updated graphics available with Apple's latest operating system. Both also now come with Apple's "Sudden Motion Sensor" technology, which is designed to protect data on the hard drive if the iBook is dropped.
After I received the iBook from Apple last month, I promptly fired up Xbench to see how the modest speed improvements would translate into benchmarks. For reference purposes, I've used Xbench before, and while the results should not be taken as absolutes, they do give you an idea for how each system compares to other models. The 12-inch