17 inch PowerBooks arrive

Although not all resellers or customers who pre-ordered the new PowerBooks directly from Apple have received confirmation that their orders shipped, some have, and now it appears that some are getting them too. MacCentral has received confirmation from some readers that their 17 inch PowerBook G4s have, at long last, arrived.

The new 17 inch PowerBook G4 was introduced to crowds this past January at Macworld Conference & Expo along side its diminutive 12 inch counterpart. Both the new systems join the 15 inch PowerBook G4 as large, medium and small offerings to pro users looking for a laptop computer.

The new 12 inch model — an aluminum-clad PowerBook about the same form factor as an iBook — has been shipping for some time, but up until now, the 17 inch unit has not been. The 17 inch is Apple’s largest laptop yet, and features innovations including laser-etched keys illuminated from below using fiber optic technology that responds to ambient light conditions.

Clocking in at 1GHz with 512MB of PC2700 DDR SDRAM, the 17 inch PowerBook G4 sports a 1440 x 900 resolution display and an Nvidia GeForce4 440 Go graphics chip coupled to 64MB of DDR SDRAM. It also comes equipped with a 60GB Ultra ATA/100 hard disk drive and a slot-loading DVD-R “SuperDrive.” The 17 inch model also has Bluetooth and AirPort Extreme built-in.