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Which macbook should I buy?

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fireball360

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 2, 2008
35
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Alright, so I'll be graduating after this next year, and I'm looking for a good college laptop. It's probably safe to say that the laptop I get will use Nehalem. I'm stuck between the premium white macbook ($1308), the premium black macbook ($1418), or the bottom of the line macbook pro ($1863). Those prices are with student discount, and everything I would want with the laptop. At first I always wanted the macbook pro, but I don't really need that much for what I'm doing. The only reason I would want it would be for a LED screen, backlit keyboard, and multi-touch. Does anyone know why the black macbook is more expensive than the white macbook, even though I'm setting up the white macbook to have the 250 gb hard drive? I hear that matte screens are great, but I could probably live with glossy. Any suggestions guys? Also, do you think that a macbook with LED screens, backlit keyboard, and multi-touch will be out by the time Nehalem comes out?

Thanks for your help,
fireball360
 
fireball360 said:
Also, do you think that a macbook with LED screens, backlit keyboard, and multi-touch will be out by the time Nehalem comes out?
Click to expand...
Apple has already said they will transition all their notebooks to LED (to reduce toxic (mercury?) waste) sometime before 2009. But that could mean Nov/Dec, or next week. Although I'd love backlit keys on a MB, they've kept this as a differentiating feature for a while, so I'd guess they won't. Multi-touch, I'd be more inclined to believe it will come to the MB sometime soon.

As to whether to buy a MBP, it comes down to what you will use it for (heavy video/graphics/gaming/etc might lean you to MBP with bigger better screen and GPU). Surfing and other "light" uses are fine on MB, and it saves you size/weight and $.

Black being more expensive than the equivalent white machine is known as Apple's "black tax". But it does give you a different type of plastic surface compared to the white, which some (including me) prefer. Whether that plus the looks is worth the ~$150 extra is up to you and your budget!
 
Mostly I'll be using it for surfing, itunes, ichat, microsoft word, quicktime, and iMovie every once in awhile. It sucks that every other mac laptop has a backlit keyboard except the macbook...

I've heard that the black macbooks are only white macbooks painted black, any truth to this?
 
Is that because the pro is aluminum, and the macbook is plastic? Because the macbook might become aluminum too soon.
 
fireball360 said:
Is that because the pro is aluminum, and the macbook is plastic? Because the macbook might become aluminum too soon.
Click to expand...

The MacBook is a much more durable machine than the MacBook Pro. The aluminium of the Pro dents extremely easily and in many cases it can scratch too. It conducts heat much better than plastic which can result in the exterior becoming noticeably hot to the touch.

In my opinion the MacBook benefits from far superior design to the Pro. Yes, the Pro may look a little nicer before you open it up (the silver is much nicer looking IMO) but for usability it's far behind. The regular MacBook has a superior keyboard to the Pro and although it's great on both colours of MacBook, the white keyboard is much nicer to type on than the black because the keys are constructed in a different way. MacBook also has no moving parts on the outside which can snag or break, whereas the Pro has a latch which can snap or get caught.

I also prefer the black's looks to the white as it has a much nicer plastic on the outside. I think the white is a little bit "garish" to look at and it's certainly something which draws attention to you because it's so bright.

I don't think the things you mention as advantages of buying Pro are really worth the hundreds of dollars extra which it costs to buy. If you don't need the dedicated graphics chip which the Pro has then you won't really see any performance benefits compared to the regular MacBook.

The black is definitely not just a paintjob - it's black plastic all the way through. If you really like backlit keyboards, it's worth remembering that the light from the screen can be enough to illuminate the keys in dark settings.
 
So, are you sort of planning out a year in advance for your purchase? Cause if you are, those might not be the prices and the different color/price variations between white/blackbook might not be a factor anymore by than.

If you're talking about the current lineup; the blackbook as you said really only comes with 90gb more, a different color and different plastic material. As it's been beaten to death, black = higher chance of oily fingerprints, white = more visible dirty buildup and scratches.

If you want to try and speculate, I highly believe multi touch will be available when there comes a case refresh (I'm finding it doubtful it'd be this year, since it's the iPhone year [again]) probably with Nehalem. For LED/Backlight it's highly probable as well, the main difference as always was the screen quality and the graphics. Currently, the speeds of a 2.4GHz Blackbook pretty much mirror the low end 2.4GHz MBP except of course in frames per second for playing games, everything else is negligible.
 
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