If you want a portable Mac, there aren’t many decisions to make. Black or white with a 13” screen in plastic; 15” or 17” screen in aluminium, 2, 2.2 or 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo; the variants of the MacBook and MacBook Pro are the only options. There isn’t an ultra-portable Mac and the only way to get a tablet version is to buy a MacBook and send it off to someone like Axiotronic for major surgery.

There isn’t the same range of extras you’ll see on PC notebooks either: no memory card slots, no biometric thumb swipes, no eSATA, no S Video or HDMI, only two USB ports on the 15” models and no option to add an HD DVD or Blu-ray drive. The MacBook Pro models have an ExpressCard/34 slot rather than a PC Card slot; the MacBook has no slot at all. But using a Mac is the only (…legal…) way of running both OS X and Windows on the same system – and inside the case, you’re getting many of the same components as in a PC.

With all models you get a built-in Webcam, Bluetooth and Draft 802.11n wireless, FireWire and a magnetic catch that makes it easy to plug the power cord in but also pulls loose quickly if someone tries to kick it across the room. Current MacBooks use Intel Core 2 Duo processors and have the Intel GMA 950 integrated graphics, which does better for business apps than games. The latest Santa Rosa based MacBook Pro models have Intel Turbo memory: Mac OS X doesn’t use it but Vista does and the powerful Nvidia GeForce 8600M you can get with more expensive models also supports DirectX 10 for Vista.

The 17” MacBook Pro is the first Apple portable with the optional 1920 x 1200 resolution widescreen, which gives you a superb quality image, but until Leopard adds resolution independence some people will find the text in dialog boxes too small. The 15” MacBook Pro has a power-saving LED backlight on the 1440 x 900 screen which can give you an extra 30 to 60 minutes on the already impressive battery life. All but the glossy-only low-end MacBook offer the choice of a glossy screen with a better contrast ratio and a matt anti-glare screen.

What look like small differences on paper add up to a spectrum of choices and a range of prices from £699 for the most basic MacBook to £1,799 for the widescreen 17” MacBook Pro.