Yesterday I got my brand new mobile device. Not a UMPC (or Origami if you prefer) as I thought two months ago, but a new Apple MacBook.
Basically my decision against the new UMPCs was influenced by the disastrous reviews of the first devices. The concept may need some more time until it’s ready for an everyday use. In the meantime I’ll stay with a proven mobile device: an ordinary notebook.
Frankly, I was looking for a tiny 12inch device and went to various shops to have a look at 12inch notebooks. Sony, Acer, Fujitsu-Siemens where the brands if I remember correctly. The problem was that the price passed way too fast my psychological threshold of what I wanted to spend on a new computer – it seems the smaller the screen, the higher the price.
In the meantime Apple presented their new 13.3inch sized MacBooks. Larger than my desired 12inch but more than 40% cheaper of what I had seen before, among some other advantages.
Because of all the issues around noise problems, heat problems and the new glossy reflecting screen I had my doubts ordering the new MacBook. Anyhow, I ordered one and yesterday I got it delivered from TNT.
So here are just my 2 cents to all those MacBook problem reports and reviews:
- Amazing industrial design! I got the black one and even if there are thousands of black plastic notebooks out there, Apple managed to let the MacBook look somehow different. Confirming the popular prejudice here: Apple users *only* care about the design of their expensive & trés chic toys!
- The new keyboard (remember the old classic TI30?) is as good or bad as any other notebook keyboard. It seems quite ok, without pretending to be a major improvement. Hey, it’s just a keyboard.
- I can’t understand why so many people complain about the glossy screen. The colors are brighter and more intensive than on other notebook screens. Of course there are reflections but
(a) according to some other posts I was expecting a mirror instead of a screen on the MacBook and
(b) it took my eyes about 10 minutes to get used to it.
Just focus on the content of the screen and not on the reflections and they’ll disappear. The outdoor test under sunlight conditions still needs to be done, then I’ll probably face the limits of the glossy screen. Otherwise, how many times I’m using it outside under sunlight? - Temperature: I wouldn’t go so far to say the MacBook has an integrated water boiler, but under heavy load the upper left corner may serve as a good coffee warmer. Honestly, it’s getting pretty warm. How warm you can observe here.
- When I plugged the MacBook with an empty battery (0% left) to the power supply for the first time, I noticed an ugly noise coming out of the power supply box. But it disappeared after 20 minutes and didn’t come back until now (crossed fingers!!).
- Speed & performance are no problem here. I’m not playing any of these super duper 3D games, so I probably won’t notice the missing video card and VRAM. For my purposes – some coding, text editing, presentations, doing simple graphics, managing my photos, music, videos, documents, my every day life – the speed is great! I don’t notice any difference to the iMac G5 20inch. No, I rather would say the little black one feels a bit snappier than the iMac G5.
- The battery let me work about 3.5 hrs (processor energy save option was set to normal). During the whole time I was continously transfering data via WLAN to my MacBook, wrote some texts, looked some things up on the internet and edited a few photos. Not working on heavy load but I bet if I don’t use the harddrive like I did while copying the files, the battery will probably last some more time.
Overall I can say that the MacBook was the right choice for me. It’s a slick mobile device providing an excellent performance and handling. The major advantages I can identify for me and my purposes are that I can stick with Mac OS X for my everyday life (I still prefer it over Windows, Gnome, KDE, etc.) and I can switch to any other operating system (Windows for GIS and GPS applications in my case) via Boot Camp or Parallels Desktop (aff link) if needed. According to some rumors Mac OS 10.5 should even allow “Fast OS switching”…
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