Apple's new MacBooks: Which one is right for you?

As you've perhaps heard elsewhere on Crave, Apple recently held a pretty broad-reaching laptop event in which it updated its entire line of portable computers.

Sure, there's new tech and spec bumps to talk about, but the really interesting part is that Apple dramatically simplified its line. While the 17-inch model is still around (with a modest upgrade to the included RAM), the real stars are the new MacBook and the 15-inch MacBook Pro, as well as the lust-worthy MacBook Air. If you're in the market for a new OS X portable, you've got some choices to make.

Each laptop is geared toward a certain kind of user. These users, in turn, each likely have a primary feature they want out of a laptop: Portability, power, or price. While it'd be nice to have all three, that's unrealistic, though these machines are all fairly close to each other on all three fronts.


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Checking under the hood of Apple's new MacBooks

Tuesday's announcement of new and updated MacBook laptops from Apple could never have lived up to the hype of the past several weeks.

After endless predictions about tablets, touch screens, and cheaper (some would say recession-friendly) products, from an US$800 MacBook to an Apple Netbook, the end result was instead a solid list of upgrades and improvements, with a few noteworthy innovations and a few interesting developments that may get lost in the "Where are the $800 MacBooks?" shuffle. Here's our take on what the new developments mean for you.



The most obvious of these is the so-called brick manufacturing process, whereby instead of building a frame and overlaying the chassis, Apple is taking the process used in the making the MacBook Air and expanding it to other MacBooks. The brick comes from a 2.5-pound piece of aluminum (in the case of the Air), which is literally whittled down to 0.5 pounds, meaning the internal frame is part of the same piece of metal as the chassis.
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The mysterious Toshiba Portege R600

We really pity the chap tasked to do a writeup on the latest Portege R600. How do you advertise a product without giving away a single piece of new information? Turns out the task was even simpler than we thought, as the Web page showcasing the R600 simply rehashes the benefits and features of the older R500 laptop.

What we could gather is that the Portege R600 is a 12.1-inch number with an integrated optical drive and an amazing battery life. Like its predecessor, it is ultraslim and light and decked out with the fourth-generation Toshiba EasyGuard technology. The latter is a proprietary application that controls the security of the machine as well as provides simple maintenance and troubleshooting. The main difference from the R500 would be its chipset, as the R600 is based on the new Centrino 2 platform. We'll keep you updated as more information comes in.

AMD Puma pounces on Toshiba

The first Toshiba laptops based on the latest AMD Puma platform have started appearing in the US, with the Satellite L305D and Satellite M305D leading the way.

Though both Intel and AMD's latest platforms allow the inclusion of both integrated and discrete graphics on a single mainboard, their implementations are different. Intel's Hybrid Graphics Engine switches between the power-saving integrated video and performance-focused discrete chip. AMD, however, allows both integrated and discrete video processors to be in use at the same time, potentially giving an even greater performance edge. It also helps that ,traditionally, AMD machines are significantly cheaper than their Centrino counterparts.

We're still awaiting confirmation if these AMD-based units will be hitting Asia shores, though the wait won't be too long as a Toshiba representative has informed CNET Asia that it will likely be holding a laptop launch sometime next month.

Netbooks a temporary Band-aid on PC industry

Despite the volatile economy, the PC industry overall appears on the surface to be doing fine thanks to the influx of cheap, underpowered notebooks.

Overall, worldwide PC shipments rose to 80.6 million units during the third quarter this year, a 15 percent increase over the same quarter a year ago, according to a new quarterly report issued Tuesday by research firm Gartner. In the U.S. however, the picture is not so rosy.

Perhaps because of consumers' economic worries, a lot of sub-US$500 computers sold in the third quarter. Whether it's a new worldwide Netbook market that's being created, or they're cannibalizing cheap laptops, isn't quite clear yet, according to Gartner PC analyst Mika Kitagawa.

Either way, PC sales in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa grew five times faster than in the US to reach 28.8 million units in the third quarter.
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