I'm about to make my return to the world of "Cafe Coding". I'll be hauling a laptop to Tequila Bookworm -- a quirky neighbourhood cafe near my house -- and spending at least part of my working day there (I'll have to charm the manager into letting me access the AirPort perched atop the air conditioner unit -- it's not open). For the work-from-the-home-office kind of person, having a cafe where one can go to do and do work is almost necessary, especially if your home doesn't have a separate room designated as "the office". Having somewhere else to go helps keep me motivated, prevents me from goofing off (you can't take naps in a cafe) and keeps me from being isolated from the rest of humanity.

("Get to the Mac-related part," I can already hear you saying.)

One of my projects is a PHP/MySQL thingy that will eventually be deployed on a server running TEH LUNIX. For this project, I'll be using my trusty 500MHz dual USB iBook (a machine that also happens to be Aaron Swartz's weapon of choice). I will also be "sharpening my saws" on Python, Java and C# (I'm running Rotor). It's proven to be a very handly little machine in the four months I've owned it.

Much higher up on the portable Mac product line is the 12" AlBook, which has roughly the same footprint as my iBook. Of course, its specs are much nicer, what with the 867MHz G4 processor, GeForce4 video card and pretty-much-full-size keyboard. It sounds as though it would be a pretty nice machine for the Cafe Coder, and in the O'Reilly MacDevCenter article A Developer's Perspective on Apple's 12-inch PowerBook, author Wei Meng Lee is inclined to agree.