Will Snow Leopard (if released) come with the refurbished macbooks? And also Should i spring the extra couple hundred for the unibody? Either i get the white or the uni and i plan to upgrade the ram either way eventually, so is there any advantage other than looks?
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Snow Leopard on Refurbished MB?
- Thread starter travisjacques
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yeah snow will come on refurbs, but that's way later on. The aluminum MB's are just sick.. I love the aluminum bodies and glass trackpad.
The unibody has a very rigid and sturdy design. They also run cooler than the white ones. You probably won't notice a difference in performance, but I would suggest just getting a refurbished Unibody. It won't discolor like the plastic macbook. Most likely when Snow Leopard is released all the computer Apple sells will have it preinstalled. It makes no sense for them to sell computers with two different operating versions. You don't see refurbs now with tiger? 
thanks for the advice, discoloration is a big turn off to me because i plan to use this MB for about 2-3 years (retiring my mac mini after 3 years of use). Hopefully the refurb prices will drop after wwdc ^^
It may take a few weeks to a month to see it in the refurbs. It wil probably depend on the sales volume. I doubt they will go back in to all their stock and install it. It is possible that they could put a disk with SL on it in the box though. Either way, if you buy a Mac after SN is officially released you should get it, even if you have to call and complain. Seems like it happened last time there was a major update.
Having owned both, I highly recommend the Unibody. The case is a lot more sturdy and feels like a higher quality product overall. Even just closing the lid on the UMB feels so much nicer due to the gasket around the screen which makes a very solid and pleasing sound.
The aluminum doesn't pick up the microscratches like the white MB does. You do have to worry more if you drop or bang the UMB into something though as you'll get nicks and bends in the case easier.
Other things I really dislike about the white MB are its propensity to become discolored, the cracking issue which will eventually cause cracks or even parts of the top case to break off where the magnets hit on the top case when you close your laptop.
I also like the glass screen more and think the overall black on silver styling is better than the mono colored white MB.
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On the technical side of things these are the differences:
White MB advantages over UMB:
White MB has a FireWire 400 port. Unless you already have FireWire I wouldn't even care about this.
UMB advantages over White MB
UMB uses faster RAM - DDR3 vs. DDR2
Glass trackpad - I really love the gestures, makes things much easier
Mini-DisplayPort - more future proof than the Mini-DVI on the white MB