I used to be able to work for 8 hours on my old 800mgh iBook before I started abusing the battery by leaving it plugged in around the clock.
Refund policies are getting really good. I bought a monitor at Staples a while back and they refunded the difference at least a week later when it went on special. They were a bit leery, but my winning smile must have carried the day.
Really? I’ve read that you should keep laptops plugged in as much as possible, to protect the life of the battery.
Damn, 200 bucks for a dvdrw drive and an upgrade to 2.0ghz?
I’ve got my 1.83 $1099 one sitting at the store with my name on it. I’m still just a little shy though, and it’s 100% due to that @#$% 950G intel integrated ass graphics chip.
I’m not going to be gaming on it… so, is it a non-issue for performance?
To me, it’s the best of two worlds… I can have a mac mini in laptop form, so I can hook it up to the KVM at home and also take it on the road.
Last item: The battery. What do you mean abused it by leaving it plugged in all the time? That’s not good? How long should a battery last anyway? My vaio 570 grx has like 15min of battery life left from full to empty on this 5 year old battery. I’ve never really used the battery EVER in it though, it’s always plugged in. I just noticed because I forgot to plug it in and it drained in 15 min this morning.
If you’re not gaming, yeah, it’s a non-issue. I woud bump up the ram to 1gig just to account for the shared ram. I don’t know how much it sucks up.
Don’t worry about the battery. Most people keep them plugged in all the time.
I’m really not happy with the integrated chip. I want to get a mac and be abe to do some dual-boot gaming on it, so it looks like I’m stuck with getting a Macbook Pro.
You want at least 1GB of ram in your mac. Believe it.
Here’s what blows about buying it in the store…
It comes out of the box with 2x256 sticks in it. You have no option. If you say “Make it a gig, sir” then they charge you $200 - not $100 as on the website - and you’re stuck with 2x256 sticks in your hand. They don’t buy the ram back that comes in it. No joke.
So, that’s $100 per 512. That’s insane. So I thought hey, I can get a gig of sodimm that’s mac certified for $86 on newegg. The question is, can I slot just one? Then I can add another later. Either way, it’s cheaper to buy their ram, toss it, and replace it with 3rd party. That’s sick.
And I’m a little stumped by: “white = $1299, black = $1499” with a very minor 20gig HDD bump. Last I looked laptop drives were about $1.25 a gig or less. So that’s a $30 upgrade at best. BUT IT’S BLAAAACK DUDE. Whatever.
The new Macbooks finally have user replaceable hard drives. Easy access to the hard drive and RAM via a slot under the battery make 3rd party upgrades (7200 RPM drives, etc) simple. That $1099 iBook is looking good. Games really aren’t an issue for me.
To address some of the earlier points:
Yes, you should get 1GB of RAM for the thing. I have a PowerBook G4 with 512 and there’s not a day goes by I don’t wish I had another gig in there.
Battery life will be awesome, as mine was, but I’ve charged it to the point that it’s not as efficient anymore, though I still get 1.5-2 hrs out of it. When I bought it, I would get 3.5.
Replacing the RAM on a PowerBook is hella easy. The slots are underneath the battery and easy to get in to. The old iBooks had it so that you could get to one expansion slot, but the other stick was connected straight to the logic board and required a fairly decent disassembly to get to. I don’t think that’s the case with the MacBooks anymore, but I’m not sure.
Mono could be right; I haven’t seen one yet.
Intel charges $129 for the CPU difference. Apple probably pays maybe $10 more for the drive… so you’re paying roughly a $50 upgrade tax I think.
I looked at the user manual on the Macbook support page and you can remove and replace both RAM modules; no longer stuck with a DIMM soddered to the logic board. This article here seems to indicate that the HD is adjacent to the RAM slots and is easily removable.
Oh probably, just surprises me (though it probably shouldn’t given its apple) that I can’t get a “superdrive” without getting the faster cpu. I’ve been tempted to get a mac mini now that their using intel chips but at 1100 for the base macbook, that is tempting considering a decent config for a mini is gonna be probably $800 + more ram from newegg etc…
Well, I won’t be in Boston to pick it up in Wednesday, but my “not nearly as tech savvy as she likes to think” mother likes my freshly-delivered MBP plenty. The big thing for her was just being able to turn it on and get it working with the house’s wifi. It took her weeks to figure out how to get that up and running on a second XP commercial in the house, but she was able just to turn the MBP on and have it automatically ask her if she wanted to join. Which is just the sort of ease-of-use I want.
I can’t wait to get my hands on it. By the way, anyone know if there’s a key + mouse press on OSX Firefox that emulates a middle mouse button click? Not being able to easily open a link in a new tab is going to hit me hard.
Command-click. And you should be using Safari. :)
The only things I use Firefox for are Flash-intensive sites or WordPress, since their implementation of TinyMCE doesn’t work in Safari.
Apple has a nice note about battery care in the manual, and I think it’s worth discussing for the windows folks that don’t get to see it. I didn’t know you needed to do this.
I’ve heard that batteries can develop a “memory”, but I thought it was a non-issue with modern ones. Maybe not. Apple says that at least once every 60 days - preferably more often - you should drain your battery completely dry and let the computer croak. Then leave it stand for 5 hours empty. Then plug it in and let it charge overnight. This “trains” the battery and maintains the 0-100% range it’s supposed to have.
I never did that with the Vaio, so I guess that explains my 15 minute 100 to 0 dash.
One thing that’s just super slick about the new macs is that they FINALLY put a right-click on the trackpad. You enable it in mouse options, and basically tell it that 2 fingertips simultaneous tap = ctrl-click. HOT. That was pretty much my final mac-beef. Farewell single button, I hardly knew ye.
I’m thinking Mac for my Mom’s 50th birthday present.
She already has a laptop, but she hates it, and neither she nor my father have any desire to learn. Not capacity, you know - they’re just have that luddite philosophy of the 70’s back-to-nature movements, or something. I don’t know exactly :).
Anyway, Macbook vs. iMac? The iMacs look pretty good on paper, but i guess they’re built into the moniter? Is that moniter a “Cinema Display” or a lesser rated moniter?
Well, I finally have my hands on my MBP. It is a thing of beauty — without a doubt, the best piece of computer hardware I have ever owned. I got it dual booting Windows XP + Boot Camp relatively painlessly and I’m making good headway with the vagaries of a new OS. OSX is actually more intuitive than Windows… the problem is switching the gears.
Only complaints so far have been that they sold me a refurbished model, but stripped one of the RAM screws, which made it almost impossible to get it off. This made it necessary to deal with those pretentious, patronizing jackasses at the “Genius” bar. When a minimum wage Apple monkey claiming that a one button mouse has a psychic interface to sentiently detect clicking context starts demanding I classify him in the same category as Stephen Hawking, I’m about ready to use my MBP to smash out every single one of his teeth.
One thing: the heat issue is real. It’s not a big enough deal for me to return it, but it can be a hot little laptop to balance on your lap on a summer day. Not unbearable but it can be a tad uncomfortable.
Let me recommend the book: Switching to the Mac Tiger Edition. Very good info in there.