PC Magazine recently posted a Back to School feature that offers buying advice for parents grabbing new computers for their kids. The company included a look at the iMac and the 12-inch PowerBook G4.
The reviewers give the iMac a high “coolness factor” rating, and said that it’s suitable for students studying graphic design, art or cinema. The iMac “isn’t just about good looks. Under all that fancy design beats the heart of a true computer,” said John Blazevic.
Blazevic also looked at the PowerBook, whose layout he called “simple and intuitive,” adding that it was the lightest portable the magazine looked at. He called the battery life “respectable,” but noted that the PowerBook did poorly in Photoshop performance compared to an IBM ThinkPad R40 also reviewed for the feature.
PC Magazine columnist John C. Dvorak speaks positively of Apple’s Rendezvous technology in a recent article entitled Best-Kept Secret Dept.
While Dvorak says there’s nothing secret about ZeroConf, the networking initiative that Apple used to create Rendezvous, few Windows users are aware of Apple’s efforts. He explained that Rendezvous is mainly used for ad hoc peer-to-peer networking to trade files, and explained that Windows “has nothing like this,” despite the fact that the underpinning technology has been available since 1999.
In the same article, Dvorak also mentions DiamondSoft’s (now Extensis’s) Font Reserve, a font management application. “I’m always skeptical when a Mac application is ported to Windows, since the port usually is fouled up in some way or has weird Mac attributes that are unfamiliar to Windows users,” he said.
But Font Reserve, Dvorak added, “works perfectly.” He lauded its ability to clean up and organize fonts, and said “Don’t think twice about it. Get this program.”