Not more than an inch in width and made of gleaming stain and scratch-resistant aluminium, the PowerBook G4 is all about sleekness and sexiness of design. What it isn't, though, is a handy portable to take on trips and business meetings, as the 17-inch width is really too unwieldy to manoeuvre through aeroplane aisles and crowded escalators, despite its weight of just over 3kg.

But there's a lot more to this PowerBook than the attractive exterior. The first thing that hits you when you open the cover is the massive size of the display, with its pin-sharp 1,440 x 900 pixel resolution. As you can imagine, playing DVD movies is almost like having a mini home cinema, especially as the images are complemented by two decent sized speakers that are beside the keyboard rather than by the hinges.

And talking of DVDs, this notebook comes with SuperDrive for DVD-R and CD-RW. Use the loaded iDVD software to burn your DVDs (reading at 8x and writing at 2x), iTunes to compose your music CDs and the Disc Burner in Mac OS X for data CDs.

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Another thoughtful feature is the backlit keyboard which has sensors that automatically adjust the illumination (and the screen's brightness) according to the ambient light in the room - an extremely helpful addition when you're in a darkened environment.

The basic specs include a 1GHz processor, a minimum of 512MB of DDRAM, hard disk space of 60GB and the excellent Nvidia GeForce4 440 Go 3D graphics card with 64MB of DDR SDRAM, which is more than enough to play decent first-person shooter games in your spare time.

In terms of its inputs and outputs, there are two USB ports (though unfortunately they are both USB 1.1 rather than 2.0), a standard 56Kbps modem and the usual audio out and headphone jacks. There are also two FireWire ports; one is the regular FireWire 400 and the second is a FireWire 800 for the next generation of peripherals, thus effectively doubling the transfer rate.

If you are doing a lot of travelling - especially by air - and you want to be able to log on to the Web wirelessly, included in the package is the 802.11g AirPort Extreme. At 54Mbps, it's the fastest wireless connection on a Mac and is backwards compatible with the 802.11b networks. If you prefer to use Bluetooth technology (perhaps to connect via your mobile or PDA), then iSynch is also included to let you do just that.

With further support for DVI, VGA, S-video and composite video signals and bundled software such as iChat, iCal (to plan your calendars), iPhoto and iMovie, you may decide that the PowerBook is suitable for use as a desktop computer and a notebook - especially if you're still saving up for the G5.

Absolutely gorgeous to look at and sleek to the touch, the 17-inch PowerBook G4 has virtually everything you'd ask from a desktop Mac contained in a 1-inch thick laptop. It's only the size that might cause some hesitation for those on the move; the doubters might opt for the 12-inch model instead.