Cooler than Vanilla Ice: the 17-inch Apple MacBook Pro

Hey Apple, quit beating Microsoft while it's down! As if the slow-motion train wreck that is Windows Vista wasn't enough for Microsoft to bear, Apple has spent the last few weeks promoting software that will let you run virus and spyware-prone Windows in a safe little cage on your Mac. Talk about tweaking a dead man's nipples: now there's this, the MacBook Pro 17-inch -- the fastest MacBook yet. Gates must be madder than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

Notable inclusions in the new design are the 9-pin FireWire 800 and 4-pin FireWire 400 ports -- putting paid to any speculation that FireWire was being phased out. There's also an 8x dual-layer SuperDrive for burning DVDs.

However, the real treat here is the screen and, sweet Jesus, what a screen she is. At a resolution of 1,680x1,050 pixels, the 17-inch display matches the pixel density of most 20-inch widescreen panels like the Apple Cinema Display and the Dell 2005FPW. For graphic designers and video editors this is a treat comparable to an all-day backrub from the Dalai Lama. There's no need to lug around a full-sized LCD screen: you can almost view two full A4 pages side by side at something psycologically approximating print resolution. Tie us down, we're about to go nuclear over this beast. -CS

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