Apple’s 17” PowerBook. Power. Beauty. Big Screen.

Does it get much better, uh, er, bigger? Yes. Check out any other 17” laptop and they’re all bigger, but none are better. In fact, none are equal. Apple’s PowerBook with the BIG screen stands out from them all.

Isn’t 17” too big for a laptop? That depends. If quick and easy mobility is all you need, the 12” will work great for email, browsing, and typing up reports in Word. The 15” is more typical for a standard sized laptop and with more screen, much more, than the little brother 12”.

But that 17” screen is to die for. Once you’ve used it for awhile, there’s no going back. That screen is awesome; the same 17” display used in the flat panel iMac.

It’s too big and bulky, right?

Wrong. Surprisingly wrong. Dainty it ain’t. But huge and heavy it ain’t either. The 17” weighs barely a pound more than the 15” but offers something that people want. Screen real estate. As Tera Patrick says, an extra two inches makes all the difference.

It’s like a laptop you can put into a back pack.

Plus, the 17” is loaded. 128 megs of video RAM. Up to two gigs of RAM, an 80 gig hard drive, airport extreme is built in, and so is the renowned DVD SuperDrive. All of Apple’s iLife applications are include; iMovie, iDVD, GarageBand, iTunes, and iPhoto.

Oh, but that screen. Yummy.

You’ll forget about the 1.3 gigahertz PowerPC processor (don’t look for a G5 to show up until the end of next year, if ever—that sucker would be HOT).

You’ll forget about the slick non-tray opening CD/DVD player. You’ll forget about the cool “lights” on the keyboard in dim light situations. You’ll forget completely about Mac OS X (because it just runs, and runs, and runs).

You’ll froget about gigabit ethernet, 800 megahertz Firewire, USB 2.0, and the slim 1” design.

You won’t forget the screen.

On trips, that 17” PowerBook display is perfect for watching DVDs in a hotel room.

Do you really need a desktop anymore? Well, yes and no. The 17” PowerBook is NOT a G5 tower. But it may be the best desktop you could own.