It looks like Apple has updated their PowerBook line and there's no mention of a mobile G5. Regardless, from a performance standpoint the improvements are pretty decent - the slowest processor offered is a 1.5GHz G4, the same CPU I used in my PowerBook review; replacing the 1.5GHz G4 on the higher end models is a 1.67GHz G4.

All of the PowerBooks now come with 512MB of memory standard - so their out of box performance should be much more acceptable than before. Apple has also dropped the price on their PowerBooks, with the 12" starting at $1499, the 15" starting at $1999 and the 17" starting at $2699. With a student/teacher discount that kicks the prices down to $1399, $1799 and $2399 respectively.

Available as an option (and standard on the 17" PB) is a 128MB ATI Mobility Radeon 9700. The added video memory is useful for Exposé but what's even more interesting is the fact that the 128MB model has a dual-link DVI output, meaning it can drive the new 30" Cinema Display.

The new PowerBooks also add a 8X SuperDrive (DVD-R/DVD-RW/DVD+R/DVD+RW/CD-RW burner) and Bluetooth 2.0 support. Other features include a new trackpad that has built-in scrolling support as well as Apple's "Sudden Motion Sensor" which will automatically park the hard disk's heads in the event of a fall (IBM introduced a similar technology a year or so ago).

The performance of the new PowerBooks should be much improved over the older ones thanks to more memory, faster processors as well as their new 5400RPM hard drives. I'd guess that the sweet spot for the new PowerBooks would be the default 1.5GHz/512MB configuration. Remember that the 1.67GHz models offer only an 11% increase in clock speed and in a best case scenario you'll get 50% scaling, meaning a 5 - 6% increase in performance due to the CPU. More than anything the new PowerBook line offers an improvement in value over the previous generation which was in need of an update.

Hopefully the fact that all of the new PowerBooks come with 512MB standard means that the next revisions of all of Apple's computers will use at least 512MB of memory. The problem is that I don't see the iMac, Power Mac or mini getting updated at least until Tiger's release (and even then, not all at the same time).

It looks like the new PowerBooks are ready to go as Apple lists ship dates of between 1 and 3 days for all of the models.