The 540c, Apple's newest, top-of-the-line color PowerBook, is a good example of schizophrenic design.
I love the speed and the clear screen. The colors are saturated, not the least bit wishy-washy. But I can't run my CAD package because there's no math co-processor. And the curvilinear case? Gimme something that closes more like a box, with no holes or jutting parts. Good, if not spectacular, are the dual batteries that allow you to switch on the fly.
I dislike the screen controls. Instead of instant sliders for brightness and picture quality, there are stupid buttons. Like push-button volume controls, they are harder and slower to use than sliders or knobs, and do not indicate their current setting by their position. In spite of all the supposed interest in making things easier to use, designers somehow insist on sticking these little burrs in our pants.
Bad: still no handle (you gotta carry it like a football). Good: it puts itself to sleep when you close the lid! Like I said, schizoid design, probably a team consisting of a genius and an idiot tossing coins to see who gets to do what.
Are there other nice touches? A zillion of them. And that's part of the problem. There are more than 20 "control panels," each allowing you to adjust some aspect of the hardware or software. It's like one of those old hi-fi systems with a hundred inscrutable dials.
Then there's the track pad. Probably the most controversial innovation, it is a no-moving-part pad that works a bit like a trackball. I like it about as well as the small (but not tiny) trackball on my PowerBook 180, and a lot better than the really tiny trackballs on the Duo series. But I like my big trackball a lot better.
Overall I'd rate Apple's new 540c somewhere between good and super. With built-in Ethernet and a gung-ho 68LC040 in the box, this is one speedy chunk of silicon. I can imagine something much better, but in the real world, this is about as good as portable computing gets.
Apple PowerBook 540c 12/320/modem: US$5,539. Apple: (800) 538 9696, +1 (408) 996 1010.
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SchizoBook 540c
