Brian's Brain

Every time NewsGator Inbox fires up, my Dell Inspiron 700m slows to a crawl. And considering that I've got the Outlook-resident RSS app set to check for new feed content every hour (and that I'm currently subscribed to 186 RSS feeds), the Inspiron 700m spends a fair percentage of its time crawling. After more than 2 years of steady use, I still love the system. I just don't love the productivity loss. So after a lengthy period of waffling, I finally decided just before Christmas that it was time for a hardware upgrade.

Given my upbeat review of the Lenovo 3000 V100, you might think it'd be a natural candidate. And indeed it would be....if not for the fact that I'm a dual-O/S dude, and my G4 PowerBook is also getting long in the tooth. The ability to run both OS X and Windows on a single system, which I extensively wrote about back in April of last year, ended up swaying me to the Apple camp.

But which Apple laptop should I pick? The 15" MacBook Pro was similar in form factor to my PowerBook, and some of its features (ExpressCard slot, FireWire 800 support, discrete graphics) were tempting. But compared to the 13.3" MacBook, the MacBook Pro was quite a bit more expensive, as well as larger and heavier. And my fond feelings for PCMCIA, which neither MacBook option handles, are well documented at this point. So I ended up going the MacBook route.

The other day, I needled Apple for its sneaky up-sell pricing strategies. How'd I deal with them? As this writeup points out, product line transitions are always a good opportunity for bargain shoppers. I wanted a SuperDrive, so the 1.83 GHz MacBook variant wasn't an option. And instead of paying $1299 or $1499 (plus tax, plus delivery) for a Core 2 Duo-based second-generation system, I instead got a first-generation 2 GHz white MacBook from PC Connection for $1099 (after rebate, no sales tax, free shipping), which also included several free-after rebate accessories: carrying case, wireless mouse and copy of Parallels Desktop for Mac.

I've subsequently seen other good deals; for a while, Amazon sold the first-gen 2 GHz white MacBook for $1049 (also no sales tax and free shipping, but without the free-after-rebate accessories), and it's currently available refurbished from the Apple Store for $899 (free shipping, but sales tax is charged, and again no free-after-rebate extras). Note that factory-refurbished goods sold by Apple carry the same warranty as their new counterparts and are also AppleCare extended warranty candidates; a pretty good deal. Had Apple been selling refurb units at the time I bought mine, I probably would have gone that route. Whether new or refurb, Dealmac and Techbargains are excellent price-monitoring portals.

Mentioning the word refurb brings up the issue of system quality. Both the MacBook and MacBook Pro have been plagued with numerous reliability issues:

• A high-pitch whine with both CPU cores engaged
• Power supply noise
• Random system shutdowns
• Discolored palmrests
• Swelling and exploding batteries
• Uncomfortable heat dissipation
• Non-uniform and flickering display backlight illumination
• Flaking paint jobs
• Etc

Apple's been iteratively fixing these flaws via a combination of hardware swaps and system firmware upgrades. I was relieved, when I got my system, to discover that it was manufactured in October 2006 and contains the latest-generation system board. And I haven't had any problems with it (albeit with limited thus-far use), aside from a slight cosmetic blemish on one edge of the LCD bezel that I didn't bother pursuing warranty coverage on.

I do have one minor nit to pick with Apple, however; the MagSafe power adapter. Don't get me wrong; it's a good idea. But you can add it to the litany of questionable product and partnering (or, in this case, non-partnering) decisions that I documented the other day. To date, Apple hasn't licensed MagSafe to any third-party power supply manufacturer, I suspect as a means of keeping all the revenue to itself. Not only does this move squelch competition and thereby drive up the price of MacBook power supplies, it also unduly limits product options. To wit, I can't directly power/recharge the MacBook from an automobile 12V socket because Apple doesn't offer a cigarette lighter adapter. Instead, I have to go through the clumsy, inefficient process of first running 12V through an AC inverter, then converting it back to DC in the Apple power unit.

The second-generation MacBooks offer several enhancements over their predecessors, for which I couldn't personally justify the incremental price tag. Their optical drives now burn dual-layer DVDs. They come standard with twice the DRAM as before (particularly attractive when running legacy PowerPC-compiled apps via Rosetta), as well as draft 802.11n Wi-Fi transceivers and slightly larger HDDs. Instead, I immediately upgraded the system to 2 GBytes of Kingston DDR2-667 SDRAM, along with a 160 GByte 5400 RPM Seagate Momentus SATA HDD. I did these upgrades in no small part because I wanted to run Windows (XP now, Vista later), both native via Boot Camp and virtualized via Parallels.

Continued with 'MacBook: Clarifying CPU Confusion'....

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