MacBook Air takes laurels in three-way usability competition (Shared Web Hosting by Inftek Hosting)

MacBook Air takes laurels in three-way usability competition
Of three ultrathin portables — MacBook Air, Toshiba Portege, and Lenovo ThinkPad — which is the most usable? To find out, Computerworld turned to usability experts and 20 impartial testers. Those testers, David Haskin relates, found MacBook Air the most usable, the most fun, and the best value of the three. In fact, they made MacBook Air “the clear winner when asked which laptop they’d purchase.”

Science Productivity Lab opens on apple.com
As a scientist, your Mac can be a valuable asset, especially when it comes time to share your research findings with colleagues. To find out how you can use tools on your Mac to create research posters, websites, and dynamic presentations, visit the Science Productivity Lab, where you’ll find tips and tutorials created with the needs of the scientific community in mind.

“All I can say is ‘wow.’”
Bob LeVitus (Houston Chronicle) considers the 17-inch MacBook Pro “the fastest, most powerful, and most capable notebook I’ve tested.” And he’s particularly taken with its display. “All I can say is, ‘Wow.’ With its bright, deeply saturated colors and rich, dark blacks, full-screen HD video is mind-boggling.”

Fastest way to master Aperture 2
Aperture 2: Professionally Manage Digital Photographs, a new title from Ben Long, Richard Harrington, and Orlando Luna, guides you step-by-step through the entire Aperture workflow, even providing hundreds of sample images to experiment with. Download the free Aperture 2 trial, work through the book’s in-depth tutorials, and you’ll see how far Aperture 2 can advance your photography.

Quick Tip of the Week: Drag-and-drop PDF merging
Ever wished you could drag the contents of one PDF into another? You can — using Preview in Mac OS X Leopard. We show you how in the latest Quick Tip of the Week.

A tip sheet for switchers from Walt Mossberg
“Sales of Apple’s Macintosh computers have been growing much faster than PC sales overall, with many new Mac buyers switching from years of using Windows computers,” admits Walt Mossberg (allthingsd.com). And to help those who have made the switch, he’s assembled “a quick tip sheet explaining a few of the most common differences” between Mac OS Leopard and Windows.