Hello,
I'm a lifelong PC user (except for Oregon Trail back in elementary school!). I bought a white 2.0 GHz C2D Macbook about a month and a half ago. I ordered some aftermarket RAM from the net and upgraded it to 2 GB RAM a few days later.
My impressions.
The Good:
The Bad:
Overall:
8 / 10
I'm very satisfied with the new Mac due to it's speed, very compelling interface, and price point for what you get, and would recommend it to anyone. I'm looking forward to Leopard.
I'm a lifelong PC user (except for Oregon Trail back in elementary school!). I bought a white 2.0 GHz C2D Macbook about a month and a half ago. I ordered some aftermarket RAM from the net and upgraded it to 2 GB RAM a few days later.
My impressions.
The Good:
- The thing is amazingly fast. With 2.0 GHz, dual cores, and 2 GB of RAM, I can run many apps at once, and the system essentially never thrashes the hard drive to swap into virtual memory (This is what slowed by 512 MB XP box to a halt). There is no waiting on the CPU either, as everything comes forth quickly without delay, no matter how many apps I run concurrently.
- It is sleek and small looking.
- The output looks beautiful on my Gateway 24" external display.
- The UI is extremely visually compelling. It makes you want to use the machine more. My favorite UI feature is Virtue Desktops (I know, it's not made by Apple). I also like the look and feel of Aqua and the built-in Apps
- iChat is slick. They have outdone themselves with the built-in camera and mic, and how easy it is to use them to chat with ppl via iChat.
- F9 - F12, expose, dashboard, etc, are brilliant. Probably tied for my favorite feature of the Mac alongside Virtue Desktops. I love these.
- Good price for how fast of a machine you're getting.
- The initial setup experience was far and above any other computer I've ever used. Very well done, guiding you through Wi-fi setup, etc.
The Bad:
- With CPU intensive processes running, the fan gets quite loud
- The Macbook is a tad heavy
- iPhoto is the spawn of Satan. After a few days of trying to use it, I ended up almost wanting to smash the Macbook in frustration. I now use Finder to view my photos, and 3rd party apps to resize or manipulate them.
- Apps on the Mac are overall not as stable as PC apps. I find that certain apps, such as Firefox, Safari, and sometimes Finder or System Preferences, will hang, and have to be killed, or in some cases I have to restart. I once had the keyboard go out. A few days ago I had to kill the Dock and restart it. For all the faults of my old XP laptop, it was rock solid in terms of stability and had very few crashes or glitches, at least compared to the Mac.
- Installing and removing apps is not as straightforward on the Mac as on the PC. I had to read about how to install an app before I figured out how to do it. You have to use a third party tool to cleanly remove an app (CleanApp), which just doesn't seem right.
- FTFF!
- I think managing lots of open apps is more efficient with the windows taskbar, than with the dock + expose.
- The Mac community sometimes has an air of smugness and arrogance that is hard to stomach.
Overall:
8 / 10
I'm very satisfied with the new Mac due to it's speed, very compelling interface, and price point for what you get, and would recommend it to anyone. I'm looking forward to Leopard.