Apple's MacBook Pro 17-inch is aimed directly at design professionals and it's hard to find a better blend of style and performance, although it is slightly lacking in features.

A key selling-point here is the Mac OS X operating system. It's been used for years in the design world thanks to its reputation for near flawless stability and also its integrated colour calibration software.

Its combination of excellent bundled software – which includes music, movie and photo editing software – and ease of use is truly outstanding.

The 17-inch screen is incredibly sharp, thanks to the 1920 x 1200-pixel resolution. The shiny Super-TFT screen makes colours overly vibrant however. This is great for entertainment use, but design professionals needing the most accurate colour reproduction will be disappointed.

The 3kg chassis is unbelievably light and slim and is built from a single piece of aluminium. It is possibly the most stylish laptop around and is also the most solid, providing great protection for the machine's components. There are no labelled multimedia control hotkeys, unlike most other similar laptops.

The firm chassis provides a solid mount for the backlit keyboard and the typing action is excellent. There is no dedicated numeric keypad, however. The large touchpad features Multi-Touch functionality, making it easy to navigate documents and photos.

Internally, a high-end Intel Core 2 Duo processor and 4GB of memory are in place. Everyday performance is great and running resource-intensive software is fast and easy. Professionals might consider the upgrade to 8GB of RAM. Apple charges £800 for this, but it will cost considerably less if you buy the memory from an independent reseller.

Two graphics cards

This laptop boasts two Nvidia graphics cards – one integrated and one dedicated. It's possible to switch between the two to optimise either performance or battery life, with the integrated chip allowing an impressive 353 minutes of mobile use. The 500GB hard drive also provides all the storage you'll need for work and play.

There's no Blu-ray drive for watching HD movies sadly. 802.11n Wi-Fi and Gigabit Ethernet are included, as are three USB ports, a FireWire 800 port for high-speed data transfers and a Mini DisplayPort which lets you connect to both analogue and digital external monitors.

The MacBook Pro 17-inch is a fantastic machine. It does lack a few features, but its brilliant build quality and excellent operating system more than compensate.

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