Any recent gotchas with the Macbook or Macbook Pro?

Post #264,343 by Another Scott 8/10/06 12:05:47 AM Reply	Any recent gotchas with the Macbook or Macbook Pro? I need to get a laptop for business travel for presentations (probably PowerPoint, maybe PDF). I would like to spend < $1k (but will go above that without much grumbling) but would like something that has long battery life, is lightweight, and fairly small. WiFi is required, blazing speed isn't. I'd prefer at least a 1280x768 screen. A built-in optical drive is required, but being able to swap it for a battery would be nice. Fujitsu has some very interesting offerings with the Ultra Low Voltage Pentium 753 - like the P7120, but they can be scarce (they seem to show up in onesie-twosies on eBay). They seem to go for about $1k. For that price, a refurbished Macbook is in the budget. Does OS X Mac Office run reasonably in a 512 MB Macbook like [link\|http://www.macofalltrades.com/ICD_1_83GHz_MacBook_13_3_Glossy_512_60GB_p/icd18mb1.htm\|this]? (I'd prefer a DVD-RW drive, but I don't know if I am willing to spend the $150 premium that Apple wants for it). What's real-world battery life like with the Macbook? It would be a secondary machine, so at this point I don't think I'd need to go the Macbook Pro route yet, but please let me know if that's penny-wise/pound-foolish. Thanks. Cheers, Scott.
Post #264,345 by Steve Lowe 8/10/06 1:00:45 AM Reply	I'm still very happy with my MacBook Pro But that answers exactly none of your questions. :) I'd say 512m is the bare minimum. I had 256m in my iBook, it suffered a lot. Upgrading to 1.2gb was a major improvement. I think I get 3-3.5 hours battery life on mine - but I haven't really kept careful track of that. -- Steve [link\|http://www.ubuntulinux.org\|Ubuntu]
Post #264,357 by admin 8/10/06 9:37:02 AM Reply	Only a few I have the 17" MacBook Pro. 1) It runs hot, although not nearly as hot as some of them I've read about. Keeping it on my lap can become uncomfortable if I don't rest only the edges on my legs. This would be more difficult to manage with the 15". 2) There's an odd, infrequent problem with the sound glitching that I haven't researched yet. Battery life is about 2.5 to 3 hours, I'd guess, but I haven't really pushed it yet. All in all it's a great machine, but I personally wouldn't put anything under 1G of RAM in it. I don't have any experience with the MacBooks so I can't give you a differential, other than to say that the Pro has a gorgeous keyboard. If the MacBook doesn't have the same, then the Pro might be worth it for the keyboard alone. Regards, -scott anderson "Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
Post #264,374 by SpiceWare 8/10/06 10:48:59 AM Reply	I've been happy with my MacBook I maxed out to 2GB right away, so I don't know how the performance is going to be with 512MB. However, based on memory usage(and the fact that it uses some[I think 64MB] of your system RAM for video), you'll want at least 1GB. I got my RAM from [link\|http://eshop.macsales.com\|OWC]. They currently have 1GB for $110 and 2GB for $215. Upgrading the RAM was easy, so you can always get it with 512 and upgrade it later. I watched a movie, just shy of 2 hours, on the flight to my brother's for July 4th. There was enough battery life remaining that I could have watched it again w/out any problems. I'd converted the movie to a 1.5GB file using Handbrake and had it loaded in a RAM drive, so the hard drive and DVD were not active. My Thinkpad was having issues, so I purchased the MacBook as a "placeholder" until I could afford a MacBook Pro next year, but now that I've used it a while I don't see the need for the Pro. I'm now looking at replacing my iMac G5 with a Mac Pro next year instead. That'll disappoint my dad, he wants to buy the MacBook from me when I upgrade the laptop. The appearance of the keyboard initially reminded me of a chicklet keyboard from an 80's home computer, but it works and feels just fine. I was concerned enough about the keyboard that I went to a store to try it before I ordered the MacBook. Darrell Spice, Jr. Trendy yet complex\nPeople seek me out - though they're not sure why\n[link\|http://spiceware.org/gallery/ArtisticOverpass\|Artistic Overpass] [link\|http://www.spiceware.org/\|SpiceWare]
Post #264,385 by Another Scott 8/10/06 11:33:41 AM Reply	Thread at slashdot with some good comments. [link\|http://apple.slashdot.org/apple/06/08/09/2044238.shtml\|Slashdot] cites an Ars Technica article that doesn't say a whole lot. Some of the 3 and above comments are useful. As usual, one has to take things with a grain of salt, but most owners who wrote in seem to be very happy with the machines. Cheers, Scott. (Who is probably still leaning toward a Fujitsu machine, for possible Linux use as well, but we'll see.)

Welcome to IWETHEY!