TNT Delivered the machine this morning.
Its a black model, stock except for a modem, which I needed for my business. (2Ghz, 512DDR2, 80Gb)
I do intend to max out the RAM, but business is slow, but also in dire need of a laptop that boots both Mac OS X and Windows.
The Physical
First impressions were OMFG!! THAT IS SOOO SHWEEEEET!!!!!! OMG!!!!!
It does remind me alot of the old pismo style laptops, which isn't a bad thing.
The rectangular shape does make it look more like a laptop than the 12", which had almost toy like dimensions. The extra space on the desktop is much appreciated, and it certainly 'feels' larger than an extra inch.
The black plastic is plastic, not paint. It does absorb the grease from fingers rapidly, and is difficult to clean. eventually I'm sure it'll even out as hands and fingers eventually touch all over, but initially, the white one is easy to keep clean. The plastic is pretty tough though..... You can try to scratch it, I did, but it's quite resilient.
The keyboard is odd initially, but you soon get used to it. It feels a bit more substantial than the old iBook models.
The screen is great. While I was cautious about glossy screens, as they do indeed have glare, I found that a non glossy LCD simply isn't bright enough to be even seen in the sun. The sun cancels out the backlight and the screen just goes dark. These glossy screens boost brightness enough so that they are usable outside. I'd take glare over a screen I cant even see any day.
The magnets are ingenious. The magnetic catch is strong, and much more robust than the iBook 'catch'. And Magsafe..... well, its cool, and I'm surprised nobody thought of it before.
The side panel with the ports on will be familiar to iBook users, and from a practical point of view it feels very natural to go iBook to MacBook.
Heat wise, Its barely hotter than my iBook 500 under general use. It does get warm... very warm. I dont think I'd ever describe it as hot though, and this is using it on a rug and on a bed. The fans do not kick in often, and when they do, Its for good reason. My G5 fans have a mind of their own, and never seemed to actually react to different workloads as advertised..... The MacBook is fast to spin them up when needed, and equally fast to spin them down when not. 5-10 seconds after I quit a game, all is quiet again.
The Performance
Starting the unit up, I set it up and began configuring the unit. Snag here was that there is no way to see my MAC address for adding the airport card to my network before the registration finished.
The unit seemed nippy and responsive, not really much faster than my G5. Network performance was terrible, barely faster than a 56k. Disabling the "Turbo" function on my router fixed that. If you have any network equipment with proprietary, non-standard speed boosting options..... turn them off.
In general use, Its fast, Its nippy..... Its my G5 on my lap.
I installed a few Mac games. I was expecting poor performance with the GMA950, and was surprised at just how well It coped. There is a huge difference between Uni-binaries and PPC code.
Warcraft 3 runs x86 native on Windows and is flawless, but Mac OS X struggles. Lets hope Blizzard patch up WC3. As its a slightly older title I had high hopes for this one running good.
Enemy Territory, Wolfenstein and Q3A were barely playable on the GMA 950, even with the Q3a uni-bin patch. I was expecting these older titles to run OK too.
World of Warcraft was reasonable considering, achieving 15-20 fps at native resolution, and about 30fps with the settings turned down. More than enough to keep it playable, if not very pretty. This is even with 512Mb.
The big oddity was...... UT2004. I was given a wide range of resolution options, I found 800x500 fills the screen and looks alright considering. With the graphics turned down, gameplay was smooth, and looked reasonable, much better than any of the older q3a titles. About 30-50fps could be had depanding on the level, and the core duo handles the AI for many many bots with no slowdown. More RAM may help in future.
Windows installed just fine, as expected. I installed several games to test performance. WoW was similar in performance to OSX, WC3 was much better, and looked and ran great....
I was able to get Need for Speed: most wanted to run smoothly too, despite it being a newer title. The title screens and menus never ran smoothly, but with the settings down, the game was smooth, good enough for a game on the train anyway.
Its a black model, stock except for a modem, which I needed for my business. (2Ghz, 512DDR2, 80Gb)
I do intend to max out the RAM, but business is slow, but also in dire need of a laptop that boots both Mac OS X and Windows.
The Physical
First impressions were OMFG!! THAT IS SOOO SHWEEEEET!!!!!! OMG!!!!!
It does remind me alot of the old pismo style laptops, which isn't a bad thing.
The rectangular shape does make it look more like a laptop than the 12", which had almost toy like dimensions. The extra space on the desktop is much appreciated, and it certainly 'feels' larger than an extra inch.
The black plastic is plastic, not paint. It does absorb the grease from fingers rapidly, and is difficult to clean. eventually I'm sure it'll even out as hands and fingers eventually touch all over, but initially, the white one is easy to keep clean. The plastic is pretty tough though..... You can try to scratch it, I did, but it's quite resilient.
The keyboard is odd initially, but you soon get used to it. It feels a bit more substantial than the old iBook models.
The screen is great. While I was cautious about glossy screens, as they do indeed have glare, I found that a non glossy LCD simply isn't bright enough to be even seen in the sun. The sun cancels out the backlight and the screen just goes dark. These glossy screens boost brightness enough so that they are usable outside. I'd take glare over a screen I cant even see any day.
The magnets are ingenious. The magnetic catch is strong, and much more robust than the iBook 'catch'. And Magsafe..... well, its cool, and I'm surprised nobody thought of it before.
The side panel with the ports on will be familiar to iBook users, and from a practical point of view it feels very natural to go iBook to MacBook.
Heat wise, Its barely hotter than my iBook 500 under general use. It does get warm... very warm. I dont think I'd ever describe it as hot though, and this is using it on a rug and on a bed. The fans do not kick in often, and when they do, Its for good reason. My G5 fans have a mind of their own, and never seemed to actually react to different workloads as advertised..... The MacBook is fast to spin them up when needed, and equally fast to spin them down when not. 5-10 seconds after I quit a game, all is quiet again.
The Performance
Starting the unit up, I set it up and began configuring the unit. Snag here was that there is no way to see my MAC address for adding the airport card to my network before the registration finished.
The unit seemed nippy and responsive, not really much faster than my G5. Network performance was terrible, barely faster than a 56k. Disabling the "Turbo" function on my router fixed that. If you have any network equipment with proprietary, non-standard speed boosting options..... turn them off.
In general use, Its fast, Its nippy..... Its my G5 on my lap.
I installed a few Mac games. I was expecting poor performance with the GMA950, and was surprised at just how well It coped. There is a huge difference between Uni-binaries and PPC code.
Warcraft 3 runs x86 native on Windows and is flawless, but Mac OS X struggles. Lets hope Blizzard patch up WC3. As its a slightly older title I had high hopes for this one running good.
Enemy Territory, Wolfenstein and Q3A were barely playable on the GMA 950, even with the Q3a uni-bin patch. I was expecting these older titles to run OK too.
World of Warcraft was reasonable considering, achieving 15-20 fps at native resolution, and about 30fps with the settings turned down. More than enough to keep it playable, if not very pretty. This is even with 512Mb.
The big oddity was...... UT2004. I was given a wide range of resolution options, I found 800x500 fills the screen and looks alright considering. With the graphics turned down, gameplay was smooth, and looked reasonable, much better than any of the older q3a titles. About 30-50fps could be had depanding on the level, and the core duo handles the AI for many many bots with no slowdown. More RAM may help in future.
Windows installed just fine, as expected. I installed several games to test performance. WoW was similar in performance to OSX, WC3 was much better, and looked and ran great....
I was able to get Need for Speed: most wanted to run smoothly too, despite it being a newer title. The title screens and menus never ran smoothly, but with the settings down, the game was smooth, good enough for a game on the train anyway.
