Thoughts from a switcher on new mb

First hello everyone in the apple section,
After spending the last few years over in the ASUS section, I finally made the switch to the fruity side.
I recently purchased a new c2d mb in white from the apple store in Oz. I upgraded the ram to 2Gb, but left pretty much everything else standard.
There have already been plenty of great reviews of the mb, so not much need for a review from me. Just thought I would give a few quick thoughts on my experiance with the mb and OSX.

The Bad (not really bad but anyway):
1) I find the sharp finish to the edges of the macbook a bit annoying would be nice for these to be pollished off a bit.
2) I accedently deleted all of my documents when I was trying to drag the finder window. I had clicked on the icon at the top of the window, and dragged the icon onto the desktop by mistake. I then deleted this icon thinking it was just a shortcut, and then emptyed the recycle bin...oops there went all my stuff. Couldnt find a way to bring it back, but lucky I had a external storage.
3) no real backup solution that I could find that came standard with the laptop. But I found iBackup on the web for free, which seems to do the job that I wanted quite well.
4) Not sure if I love or hate the glossy screen yet. It picks up finger marks very easily and has a definite sweat spot for viewing, ok for one person but with multiple people viewing at different angles, the colours can washout.
But on the upside its very bright, great for dvds, and single person useage.
I dont find the glare to be an issue in the office either.
5) Office and other rosetta programs can take a while to load. I had a 50Mb powerpoint presentation which was taking about 1-2min to load. The main issue I had with this is that there was no loading bar or indicator to say that things were progressing, so the first few times I thought the program had crashed. Once loaded however things were snappy enough to work on.
6) Its to simple sometimes, I often spend hours trying to figure out how to do something, diving deep like I would with XP only to find a simple solution...take ejecting a disk...a button above the delete key...yet I didnt see that for hours!
7) I would love for it to be a bit smaller and lighter...closer to 2kg.. and with a smaller bessel around the screen....also I would prefer the security port to be at the back rather than the front side left...but then nothing is perfect.


The Good
1) I love the search/spotlight. I hardly ever used search in windows, even google search. But I love how it can scan through the text of a pdf and pick out words. So so useful for me (I do research and everything I read is in pdf format).
2) I like the keyboard...its cool
3) I have had no issues with heat, esp on battery the thing runs very cool...except when under load...then the fans kick in. I downloaded the smcfancontrol utility, although I dont use it that often anymore.
4) Expose is also a really useful feature.
5) It networked first time with my home windows network.
6) It has good battery life...im getting about 4hours at the office with about 50% brightness.
7) Sleep works really well. I never ever used it on the pc..the laptop would always wake up with a really bad hangover...and require a reboot to work properly. Now I just close the lid! Perfect.
8) Things just seem to work better on the mac...eg dashboard is alot more stable then the yahoo widgets for the pc. The force quit works alot better then end process in XP. Although I have had a few lockups with my laptop, I still feel like it is more stable than XP. I seem to spend more time doing work then fixing things. I used to spend a huge percentage of my time just trying to figure out why something had gone wrong. Because most of the settings are all hidden away, Im not tempted to even begin looking for problems.

Cant think of anything else at the moment, except to say that Im very happy with my purchase.
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ps here are few useful links that helped me make the switch easier.

1) dbxconv ( http://freenet-homepage.de/ukrebs/dbxconv.html)
good utility for migrating outlook express to mail
2) iBackup ( http://www.grapefruit.ch/iBackup/)
nice free backup program
3) http://www.opensourcemac.org/
lots of links to good mac freeware. mplayer is a great addition works really well and has a nicer feel than vlc.
4) www.apple.com
surprisingly useful site. perhaps Im used to the confusion of MS, but the software pages, and support forums are now my first stop for trouble shooting.

 

Nice.
You should check out two threads:
Mac Games
Mac Gems
(these need to be stickied!)

You don't like the glossy screen? The viewing angle on them are the best out there. MUCH better than the mattes on the MBP vs. the glossy on the MBP.

Yup, I agree, the MB should be lighter. But it's built to be tough.

I laughed at your eject button comment. I know what that was like. Took me a while to notice that. Now I accidently hit it all the time.

 

Ok, ok, I'll sticky them. Been meaning to for a while just never got around to it. I merged them and stickied it. It is now called Mac Gems: Utilities, Games, and more!.

As for Underpantman, glad to see everything is going well! Many of those annoyances will go away with time. You may also want to give SuperDuper! a shot. I use it to make a bootable clone of my laptops drive and it works great.

 

nice review, i am going through similar experinecies with my new mbp...though i am not completely 'switched' to mac os x yet, use both boot cam and parallels. one problem though is that i have not figured out how to disable monitor on the mbp as i work on an external one most of the time. the driver settings in bootcamp are close to none, i can only use the external monitor as extended, in the mac os x i figured out how to make the external one my mail monitor but could not disable the mbp's own. Basically i just want to be able to close the lid and work with the external monitor only. If someone knows how to make it or if it is at all possible that would be great. thanks.

 

In OS X, the notebook needs three things connected, power cord, DVI cable, and a mouse. Probably want to plug a keyboard in too. Close the lid and wait for it to go to sleep. Then with the mouse or keyboard, wake it up. If they do not work because the computer is sleeping (Bluetooth for instance I do not think works while the computer is asleep.) you can use the Front Row remote, just press a button. That's it, your MBP should wake up with the only screen being your external. I think this works in Boot Camp also, but I cannot remember.

 

Bluetooth can wake up the computer. You have to enable it under preferences > bluetooth > check off "allow bluetooth devices to wake up this computer."

Just pair the mouse or keyboard before making it go to sleep.

 

Thanks for advices, guys, will try it tonight.

 

I like the screen, but my wife doesnt, she is an artist, and complains that the colours (of her paintings) look wrong at a certain angle...make that pretty much every angle. I dont see the problem myself, but the fact that she keeps moaning about it has affected me inturn..lol
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Keep in mind, to get the true color reproduction of an image, you must look straight on. While I think the MB/MBP LCDs have the best viewing angle, all LCD's loose their colors when viewed at angles, even small ones.

But only an artist would really be able to pick bones with the glossy. It's reproduction isn't as good as a matte, but for the none pro's out there... it would make little difference to us

Try changing the brightness. Lowering it down some seems to give mine a more even and natural looking picture.