Excited to try my new MB, and a word on the ZT3000

Well I'm home at last and in the corner of my room sits a box, inside which (I'm hoping!) is a refurb black macbook. I can't wait to try it out. I admit I'm a bit scared/nervous/have doubts going from a PC to a MAC. But so far whoever I've talked to who used to work with a PC and now a MAC says there are thrilled with their new OS. I'm also scared of becoming a bit dumb when it comes to the ins and outs of windows. For the past 6 years I've learned to tweak my windows XP, and while I'm no software or tech savvy, I've become comfortably familiar with windows and many of my friends often ask for my advice when they come across problems. But hopefully I'll be able to get my hands on a cheap copy of windows xp or vista and run Parallels, and that should give me the incentive to kicking and screaming at Bill Gates and Windows again

But for now the macbook has to wait, as i have to finish two assignments (why am I on this forum then?), which I will do on my old HP ZT3000... which brings me to another point: a word of praise, and hate, for the ZT3000. It's by far the sturdiest consumer laptop I've ever seen, except maybe a bit around the CD-ROM. Good speakers, nice screen, and aesthetically pleasing. While I wouldn't compare its keyboard to a lenovo laptop, it is truly magnificent in every way: the layout, the feel, the response, etc.
But it is relatively heavy at 6.5lb (I guess that's average for a 2004 15.4" laptop), which made me wish I had bought something smaller. And of course the damn motherboard, which because of it my screen works only once out of a 100 times on startup, the main reason why I bought a new laptop.

Had the last issue not occurred, I would've said this was one of the best, if not THE best consumer laptop of its time. But despite its glitch, it will be missed.

Enough said. Time for some mental preparation in welcoming the new MB.

 

You just need to get use to the lack of a start menu, and start using finder for looking for stuff. And you may find your dock very pleasant and user-friendly. It'll be fun =)

 

be sure to get quicksilver. It will save you loads of time and keep your dock from being crowded like crazy.
coolmacapps.com has a great list of... cool mac apps.

 

k couple of things:

1. What the hell is a 'dock' everyone is talking about?
2. I finally opened the macbook. I was a bit dissappointed that I couldn't go through the opening ritual as it was a refurb laptop and was shipped in a different box. Everything seems to be there though (a remote which I at first thought was a iShuffle!, adapter, cable, and a manual) and was put in very nice, tidy, and neat. Now, whenever I get a new electronic gadget like a cell phone or a laptop, I always let it run on battery at first until it's completely dead, and then I charge it for 12 hours. Is this the correct way of doing things? If so, what about a refurb mac? Is the battery used already?
3. I got an elevator. It was shipped in a box 10 times bigger than itself, and now I actually feel sorry for getting it. It's kinda expensive for something like that.

Alright, that's all for now GOnna turn the baby on>..
My god, I'm so excited!

 

k, inspected the laptop thoroughly before turning it on. Everything seems fine. No scratches, nothing. All keyboard keys are in place. After turning the laptop on, I did notice some light leakage from the bottom of the screen, but really nothing big. Just a slight and minor leakage. I wouldn't even notice it if I wasn't looking for it.

Couple of things before I start a new thread to ask questions about my macbook:

4) I notice that I can easily leave fingerprints on this baby. How do you clean it?
5) If I want to install bootcamp, do I need to partition the HD?
6) Holy @% this thing is smaller and ligher than my ZT3000!
7) I signed up for a trial version of .mac. How is it?
8) OH OH PROBLEM: I suddenly noticed that the mouse pad or track pad or whatever it's called, the middle part of it has a slight slight bump, so little in fact that you really have to look at it from an eye level. At first i thought maybe it's normal and the thing is supposed to be concave a bit, but I pushed the middle part and it went down. The thing is still down after 5 minutes. What should I do?

 

About the fingerprints, just a moist washcloth will do the trick. Make sure it's got just a minimal amount of water in it(almost dry), you don't want any runoff going into the computer.

Boot camp will do all the formating and partitioning for you! It's an apple product, so no worries!

They are small, and very lightweight. Those are good things

I never really got in to .mac. Seems overpriced, as you can get most of the things it offers for free.

On the trackpad: Just watch it for a while. If things continue to look odd with it, call apple. Their support is astoundingly great, especially after having an HP.

The Dock is the little thing at the bottom(usually. It can also be on the left or right side) that holds shortcuts to your most used applications. check this out to help you get used to OS X.

 

Thanks. The questions are just piling up in my mind, but so is the excitement!
One thing was left out:
"Now, whenever I get a new electronic gadget like a cell phone or a laptop, I always let it run on battery at first until it's completely dead, and then I charge it for 12 hours. Is this the correct way of doing things? If so, what about a refurb mac? Is the battery used already?"
The battery is running low so I guess I'll post this in the hardware forum as well...

 

The standard way to recalibrate a macbook battery is to let it drain all the way down(until it puts itself into sleep). Close the notebook, and hook it up to the charger. Let it charge, untouched, until the battery is full. Once it's fully charged leave it on the charger for another 5+ hours, thought during this time you can use it all you want.

Once you've done that go to the blue apple in the upper left corner and click "about this mac". That'll bring a pop up window, click "More Info...". Now in this window find 'power' on the left and click it. In the section labeled Battery Information find the "Full Charge Capacity" and report it back here. I'm not entirely sure what the macbook should be, as I have a MBP(mine is 5423 after 30 cycles). Your "Remaining Capacity" should be the same as your "Full Charge Capacity" also.

 

Well, i thought that thing was just for old batteries like the previous user said, so I just recharged it at 10% for more then 6 hours.
Full charge capacity is 5106, same as remaining capacity.

Also question: do you usually turn your laptop off when you're not using it, or you just close the lid and let it sleep?

 

Closing the lid puts it to sleep, which is a good thing(as opposed to Windows' version of sleep). I usually just close it, unless I know I'm going to be gone for a while, or traveling in various temperatures. Even then it probably wouldn't matter if you just let it sleep, as all it does is store everything in your RAM and then basically shut down everything else.