Apple Macbook White notebook computer

A few months ago, Apple redesigned its popular Macbook laptops, switching from their traditional white plastic casing to a gleaming new aluminium design, in which the body top is made of a single sheet of metal.

One advantage of the new design is that it’s thinner and more lightweight than previous models. Unfortunately, the fancy metallic design is quite costly to manufacture so the new Macbook models are more expensive than their predecessors.

Of course, jacking up your prices in the middle of a global economic meltdown isn’t a terribly good idea, so Apple has also decided to keep one of the old white Macbook models available for about £700 in order to provide a less expensive alternative. It's not exactly the same as before, though: the white model has been upgraded too, and now it represents pretty good value.

The basics haven’t changed too much. Priced at £719, the white Macbook has a 13.3in screen, a 2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and a 120GB hard disk. However, the memory has been upgraded to 2GB and, more importantly, the Macbook’s graphics performance has been given a considerable boost by using a new Nvidia 9400M graphics card.

The old Intel graphics processor used in previous models couldn’t handle the complex 3D graphics in games such as Doom 3, but the new Nvidia model provides quite respectable gaming performance.

Admittedly, there have never been that many great games available for the Mac, but the Mac operating system (which is known as OS X, and is the key feature that makes Macs different from PCs that use the Windows operating system) is heavily dependent on fancy graphics effects, so the improved graphics performance helps to make the computer feel faster and more responsive even when carrying out simple tasks such as browsing through files on your hard disk.

The improved graphics will also help with the iLife software package, which is also supplied with the computer. That package is another big differentiator between Macs and Windows PCs, and it includes handy software for dealing with your photos, pictures and music, even down to creating your own music or editing a video. Other handy features include a built-in webcam, USB sockets, high-speed Firewire interface socket, which is faster than USB for connecting external hard disks, and wireless networking.

All that adds up to quite a decent little laptop. So while the white Macbook may not have the gleaming good looks of its bigger brothers, it actually represents better value for money if you’re on a tight budget these days.