Newbie meets Macbook.. Fighto

Introduction​

Hey guys, i initially started on this forum in the "what laptop should i buy."

Today, i am happy to say i have taken the plunge! And i must boxing day is hell.. i lined up believing that people would kill eachother for the macbook which was at FS for 1099.99CAD. Only 5 2.0GHz macbook were in stock and about 7 2.2GHz macbook. Sadly, after telling the rep to grab my macbook, all my dad's credit card got rejected, not enough credit availability and my heart sank. I imagined getting my macbook differently, i guess you could say, but nonetheless it has been purchased! I guess its safe to say that lining up for boxing day is not worth it unless you are going for those door crashers, and i am a fool for doing so, but at least i was able to experience the boxing day madness.

Opening up this new laptop was certainly a joy, and that magsafe power adapter, who wasn't caught surprised when it just snapped rite in. Now my initial response upon turning on the macbook was that the screen was too bright! After going thru the painless process of setting up my macbook, i was on my way to set up the internet, and reducing the brightness of the macbook by the press of a button, nice and simple controls i must say. Now any laptop i would say, just isn't the same without internet, i think thats something both pc and mac users can agree on.

Overall, i am fairly happy with the purchase, mind you, i was a little sadden after having to go thru the whole ordeal of waiting and coming home with nothing. One thing i certainly missed is having a mouse, but that won't be much of a problem after price matching a VX nano.


Now onto the little details of my experience with OS X.
-iChat: man i wish i knew how to use you, but adium will do for now, there is also msn messenger but it seems like windows left us mac users with a lemon . One thing for certain is that for any program that OS X lacks compare to Windows, there are usually a number of open source programs simply designed to replace that certain program. But does that mean the program develop for OS X is superior to Windows? Not necessary as it can be more troublesome in the sense that it will be an adjustment, and it might not exactly be the way you like it.
-Safari: I prefer firefox, but we all have our own preference.
-While trying different laptops especially at retailers such as FS and Bestbuy and even the Dell Kiosk, which has a range of laptop brands from HP, Toshiba, Sony and of course Dell. One thing i noticed about HP is that i usually have to press that little button above the trackpad to disable the trackpad in order to effectively type, otherwise, the mouse goes kind of everywhere and lots of random clicking. Another thing i found annoying about HP laptops was that the enter key has the bump coming out on the 'qwerty' key roll. As a result, i often miss the enter key, but this is on selected models that i have played with at FS and BB. Sony - i like their sleek design especially the CR models, but between the macbook, it was alot more pricey at the time and beyond my budget, but as i have said before we all have our own preference. Dell.. ah yes.. i was a tough choice choosing between dell and apple, but in the end it really comes down to your own individual decision. For me, i was interested in OS X, i was hooked on it while testing it out at the Apple store.
-Quicktime: No.
There is still alot of things i have to try, but simply installiing programs such as firefox, msn, adium, that i have downloaded, i can say that installation is definitely alot easier and so far alot faster than windows, where we have to wait for that bar to go to 100%. Here, we download like on windows, and we drag the file into our application folder. Simple and Bittersweet.

Bootcamp is definitely something i must try, and use it to install XP, but i still haven't gone thru the whole process of reading the well written Switcher 10101 guide, still need to figure what's the best way to max. performance and amount of harddrive space that should be allocated for the partition.
Bootcamp i would claim is simply great, we can enjoy Mac OS X while also going back to Windows.

The macbook is really quiet and i have been playing with the macbook for basically the whole afternoon. The battery life is super amazing, i ain't exactly sure how long it has been on, but i got home at. Yes, its true the edges are quite sharp, but not sharp enough to be used to cut your wrist. I have no complaint about the keyboard, some has mention that the keys are quite weak and wobbly, and it can be easily seen in some of the Macbooks at the Apple store, but my keyboards i would say is quite firm, and a joy to type on compare to the ways i have typed on at the apple store.

My questions to you guys:
how much hard drive space should be allocated to XP parition
how do i use iChat with a hotmail account, from what i am seeing it askes for google accounts and jogger accounts.
how do i turn off the shadow from these application.

 

1: this is a personal preference decision. Movies, large collections of music and video games take up the most space. If you won't be holding those things on the windows side, you don't need to allocate very much to windows.

2: ichat is an instant messanger, i think you are looking for the mail app.

 

i should of probably mention that i got the 2.0GHz macbook. What i notice is that 20-30 GB was already taken up, with only 80 GB in this model, i really wished that i have read a post that have notify me of this. That extra 228 bucks including tax would of been justified for more hard drive space.

 

If you want more space for cheap, reformat the drive and reinstall the OS from the support disks. This time, leave off everything you don't absolutely need (extra languages, printer drivers, bloated software suites, etc).

 

now regarding battery calibration, should i do this weekly or constantly?
right now, i plan on actually reforming, but the battery is currently at 20%. As i am afraid that it might drain all the remaining battery power during the installation process, should i just plug in the adapter or should i just drain the battery and charge it back and at that point reformat?

 

As far as Apple recommends, you should calibrate your battery once a month, once a couple of months. It's really up to you in the end. I haven't done the actual calibration process yet, mine is almost plugged in all the time.

If you wanna calibrate it right now, let it drain, and do the whole process and then reformat and stuff. If not, you can always plug in the adapter, format, install, do whatever and THEN do the calibration. There's no hurry

About Bootcamp, it depends on what you need windows for. I have a 160gb drive and I've given 60gb to Windows. Well 56gb that is real. And 100gb for OS X. I only play a couple of games so 50something gb for Windows is enough for me. If you can, tell us what you need Windows for and we'll be better able to tell you about how much space you can allow.

Cheers!

 

i only need windows for one game, which is warcraft 3.

 

Okay, then you can go with a 20gb partition for Windows. That should be enough for it and one game. (considering you have a 60gb hdd to start with)

Also you can use paralells or vmware to run Warcraft from OS X. I'm guessing the Macbook should handle that old game pretty darn nice, even if in virtualization. But don't necessarily quote me on that

UPDATE: Why not just get Warcraft 3 for Mac and you're done with Windows all together?

 

Yeah if all you will play is Warcraft 3 then install it on osx. It ran great when I had a 1gb 2.0ghz macbook with intel gma 950.

 

how do i get rid of the shadow that surrounds the app. window

 

hah yeah don't waste 20 gb for warcraft III.

all blizzard games are made for mac also. even if you have to rebuy the game it can only be a few dollars.

 

The shadows under the windows are part of OS X...there's probably some code in Terminal to change that.

As for the hard drive being taken up so much already, if you decide you don't need some parts of iLife such as GarageBand, getting rid of that will save tons of space.

Also, I'm a little surprised you thought the installation process was frustrating and difficult...it seemed really straightforward to me. Which part was difficult?

Anyhow, congrats on your new MacBook .

 

well i have my eyes on some Kingston DDR2 667 PC2-5300 rams for $40 at FS? Are there any other brands of ram i should consider?
For instant would these ram be compatible? http://www.canadacomputers.com/main.php?do=ShowProduct&cmd=pd&pid=014086&cid=RAM.187.566

 

Kingston is a well known company and for 40 bucks that is a good deal. Better hurry though, both the FS in my city are sold out of them.

 

thanks for the help everyone. i brought 2x 2GB kingston ram today it was just $10 more from the 1GB kingston. will be installing them soon.

 

Sounds good, xOnic! There's tons of guides and instruction videos on YouTube for installing RAM on the MacBook .

 

Good buy. I plan to get me a couple of those also. No way I'm paying Apple $1000 for 4GB of RAM.

 

hello i am on my second day with the macbook, still learning about quicksilver before using it, and getting used to the new shortkeys, now so far, i have yet to find a shortkey to maximize [let say you tab to the app., but the window for the app is down on the dock, how do i maximize it, not referring to the hide function] and is there any shortkey that serves like the alt function for windows.
thanks in advance.

 

well, just installed my 4GB of ram, something that worries me is that upon screwing back on the L-bracket, i notice that parts of it sticks out a tiny bit, even though i tried to push it back in, hopefully that shouldn't cause any problem. Overall, it was quite easy even tho i ain't really good with computer hardware, but one thing for sure, it requires quite a push and pressure. You don't really notice any difference in startup time or anything, but for instant for those that plays with Google Earth, i can definitely tell ya that when you zoom into the world, its definitely alot better/faster with less lag. Cheers.

 

I don't think there is a shortcut to maximize or "unhide" the window from the Dock...that's a good one. I'll take a deeper look.

 

anyone know of a good sleeve or case for the MB, currently i am looking at those incase neoprene sleeves from the apple store [canada], but i am worry that it might not be enough if i were to put the sleeve + MB in my backpack. any help or previous experience w/ these sleeves would be deeply appreciated