New White Book vs Base 2.0 Alu Mac Book

[hodgeheg]

What that guy said.

But since I'm in a good mood, I'll help you out a bit.
The WhiteBook and alu MacBook have the same graphics card, just that the alu one has DDR3 and the white one DDR2, so the difference in performance will be a bit different. Even if you don't play games, a good graphics card will make your overall experience much better. The build of the alu one is 1000 times better. I have had the casing on my WhiteBook replaced once (I have it for a bit over a year) and i already have 4 cracks on the inside, and I baby this thing like nothing else. Also, like you said the alu ones have better heating.
I think the price difference is way more than worth it for the alu one.

I tend to agree that aluminium is nicer, BUT having dropped my MBA (not very far, in a case) and seen it bend when plastic would probably have just been fine, there are pluses and minuses. The plastic scratches more and creaks more, but it's still pretty sturdy and is probably less susceptible to damage from minor knocks. Assuming it doesn't crack, it appears fine, where as aluminium bends I really don't know. I just know that I've seen friends drop white plastic macbooks in a biiiiiiiiiig way and they came out of it better than my Air with its much smaller drop. The macbook should be a bit stronger, since it's that bit thicker. It does indeed not dissipate heat as well. The actual performance between the newly up-specced white macbook and the alum one should be fairly minimal.

You would probably be well advised to check out the screens side by side too. IMO the white macbook is actually nicer due to being less reflective, though many people like the new ones more - it's probably a personal choice thing so I really would take a look if you can.

One other note, the keyboard feels more solid on the aluminium ones.

 

[Patriks7]

Forgive me for making assumptions but from the damage shown it looks like it may have been caused by grabbing/lifting the MacBook by one corner. Too much pressure on a five pound object causes the plastic to crack?

I've had my current MacBook for two years and another one before that for one year. There have been no cracks. When I pick it up, I do so by holding both sides or front and back, not just a corner.

Again, I could be wrong but that's what it looks like to me.

I always pick it up with two hands. As I said before, I baby this thing as nothing else. Looks like you can't win with Apple on this

I tend to agree that aluminium is nicer, BUT having dropped my MBA (not very far, in a case) and seen it bend when plastic would probably have just been fine, there are pluses and minuses. The plastic scratches more and creaks more, but it's still pretty sturdy and is probably less susceptible to damage from minor knocks. Assuming it doesn't crack, it appears fine, where as aluminium bends I really don't know. I just know that I've seen friends drop white plastic macbooks in a biiiiiiiiiig way and they came out of it better than my Air with its much smaller drop. The macbook should be a bit stronger, since it's that bit thicker. It does indeed not dissipate heat as well. The actual performance between the newly up-specced white macbook and the alum one should be fairly minimal.

You would probably be well advised to check out the screens side by side too. IMO the white macbook is actually nicer due to being less reflective, though many people like the new ones more - it's probably a personal choice thing so I really would take a look if you can.

One other note, the keyboard feels more solid on the aluminium ones.

Well, sounds like you have a pretty thin case then. My friend has the Incase white one and dropped his Air a couple times and there is no visible damage. Anyway, I am planning on buying a nice hard sleeve for mine once I get it. Only problem is, the only one I found that I like is 350$

 

[iPhoneNYC]

White vs Alum

I've used both - the alum for a couple of weeks and a new updated white one for a week or so. For me the pro and cons weigh out to even. Firewire on the white is a big plus for me as my office has a lot of drives that I sometimes need. An older white version has no crack issues at all for me but my alum book has some dents (from TSA) so that's a toss up. I originally had trackpad issues on the new alum and that was mostly fixed with the software update. The internal workings of the two books is virtually identical now. Screen better on alum. So back and forth -- is it worth the extra $300 bucks??? I would say no.

 

[Undo Redo]

I always pick it up with two hands. As I said before, I baby this thing as nothing else. Looks like you can't win with Apple on this

Amazing then that you have lost significant chunks of three corners. I guess some of us are just lucky, or some of the plastic Apple is using is defective.

 

[fifthroot]

We have a whitebook which is coming up on a year old. It gets used for hours each day, and the last 3 months our 3 year old has been using it to view cartoon sites. No big scratches, no stains or discoloration, and no cracking.

 

[fibrizo]

I'm actually curious about the new whitebook, I know it has a larger battery than the alu macbook, but with a shorter rated battery life. But now that the chipsets have been changed and processor as well, I wonder if they wouldn't be similar. I know the LCD is still not LED backlit, which is more power consumption, but I'm not sure the 4.5 rated hours is with the new nvidia chipset and penryn core. Anyone test this yet?

 

[gixxerredliner]

Plastic vs Aluminum

So far is it safe to say


MB Air= bend if dropped, best screen

MB Alu= nice design, doesnt crack but chips, screen to glossy, led back lit

MB White= cracks, decent screen, bad at heat distributing


Did i miss anything? Man these are all solid points that you all from expierence are bringing up, i cant understand for the life of me why apple didnt include LCD back lit for the White model. Correct me if im wrong but doesnt LED back lit make for a better screen?

 

[Eric S.]

Did i miss anything?

Firewire!

 

[Undo Redo]

Correct me if im wrong but doesnt LED back lit make for a better screen?

Perhaps, but at this point it's more expensive. I'm happy to do without if it saves me $100.

 

[hodgeheg]

Well, sounds like you have a pretty thin case then. My friend has the Incase white one and dropped his Air a couple times and there is no visible damage. Anyway, I am planning on buying a nice hard sleeve for mine once I get it. Only problem is, the only one I found that I like is 350$

It was in an Incase sleeve already and being put into its second layer of protection, a padded crumpler rucksack, when it slipped out of my fingers and onto the floor maybe 1.5-2feet drop. Unfortunately it fell perfectly onto a corner. Otherwise it would probably have been OK.

I've not seen a hard case I liked, and given the temperature issues I've had on various macs (though not this one) I'm always a bit nervous about them, but I've never investigated that much.

 

[alphaod]

I find that the build quality of the plastic MacBook is simply not worth it. I feel it's just a marketing ploy by Apple to say they have a sub-$1000 computer.

The 8 exchanges I've gone through all had unacceptable issues—crooked lids, crappy keyboards, kernal panics, dead HDDs, missing screws. Yikes.

 

[jamse]

hey gixxerredliner i finally bought my polycarb macbook, and i.... LOVE IT. definitely worth the money, i mean i would like to have the led backlit and multi touch, but i definitely can live without it. besides that everything works without a hitch. though i have not taken it out in the wild yet, since i have been customizing my desktop since yesterday after the big purchase, and my skin from bestskinsever.com has not arrived (a buddy and i compared bestskinsever with zagg invisible shield, and they are exactly the same only dfference is that zagg comes with the "soapy solution" which apparently adds another 20 dollars for the macbook skin or 10 for an ipod touch skin...... ... ...).

one of my friends let me burrow his alu macbook for a few days to help me decide whether to buy the unibody or polycarb, so i took out his hdd and replaced it with an 80gb i had laying around. reinstalled osx, installed all my core stuff, office word, excel, x-chat, adium, photoshop cs4, dream weaver, adobe, then did some work on it for a few days, and comparing that experience to this machine and working feels about the same. only thing i really miss was the multi touch and led display, but definitely not worth that 300 extra bones for the work i do.

comparing this experience toward my gf previous generation polycarb macbook, is it runs much much cooler than hers, definitely does not get as loud when i run it for a long time. (ive left it on for a day straight)

anyways i havnt read up on whether you decided on going the economical route with the polycarb macbook or just going all out for a unibody macbook pro.

oh here is my desktop that ive been customizing:

 

[johnny13oi]

Regarding the denting aluminum Macbooks, I think they should have used a different material that is stronger and not so soft. I have many Dells that has a magnesium composite shell and they are built tough and light. I can easily hit the laptop bottom side with a screw driver and nothing would happen with the Dell. And yeah I know the aluminum helps dissipate heat better but I have a M1330 with a T9300 2.5ghz Core 2 Duo, 8400M GS dedicated GPU, LED backlit display, Wifi-n and bluetooth, bluray burner, 500gb and it has the magnesium shell and it doesn't overheat at all (stays under 70C both CPU and GPU while playing Call of Duty 4).

The difference in ram type DDR2 and DDR3 might make a difference because I know the 8400M GS with DDR2 in the Dell Vostros are much slower than the DD3 in the XPS. But I wonder how it compares to the 9400M using shared ram at 1066MHZ compared to the 8400M GS using dedicated DDR3 running at about 1500MHZ.

Also does anyone have 3dmark06 benchmarks of the Nvidia white Macbook with 800MHZ DDR2 ram vs 667MHZ DDR2 ram?

 

[panzer06]

snip

The difference in ram type DDR2 and DDR3 might make a difference because I know the 8400M GS with DDR2 in the Dell Vostros are much slower than the DD3 in the XPS. But I wonder how it compares to the 9400M using shared ram at 1066MHZ compared to the 8400M GS using dedicated DDR3 running at about 1500MHZ.

Also does anyone have 3dmark06 benchmarks of the Nvidia white Macbook with 800MHZ DDR2 ram vs 667MHZ DDR2 ram?

I have a new mini with the DDR3 ram and the 9400m and a new white MB with DDR2 ram and the 9400m. Both systems have 4GB ram and 500GB HD (mini is 5400, MB is 7200). Interestingly, the Vista Experience rating was the same for everything except the Business graphics score dropped from 5.0 on the mini to 4.6 on the MB. This must have something to do with the shared ram being of the slower DDR2 on the MB. My games are actually faster because the native res on the MB is 1280x800 while my mini native res is 1920*1200 on the external 24" Samsung.

I imagine the comparison would be very similar substituting the Alum MB for the mini in the comparison. That said, I have numerous FW devices and had to stay with the white MB if I wanted the smaller form factor. Besides with the Microcenter sale that ends on April 26th, I get a $200 rebate on the white MB. @ $799 this little workhorse is a steal.

Cheers,