desh: (fuzzy sweatpants)
desh ([personal profile] desh) wrote2006-06-27 09:23 pm
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MacBooks just showed up on Apple's online store in the refurbished section. About $1350 for the cheap one, the warranty, and a RAM upgrade from Newegg. So tempting...

EDIT: Mac owners, how necessary is the AppleCare warranty?
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[personal profile] desh 2006-06-28 11:12 am (UTC)(link)
Eh, it doesn't feel so first-gen anymore. I have a few friends with MacBook Pros, and they haven't had any problems.

LIES!

[identity profile] dredpiraterober.livejournal.com 2006-06-28 03:26 pm (UTC)(link)
Uhhh, they are liers...There are tons of problems, which I could go in to if you want me to.

And you should get the warranty.

Re: LIES!

[personal profile] desh 2006-06-28 03:53 pm (UTC)(link)
Can you go into it, actually? This might dramatically affect my decision.

Also, do you have a Win XP Pro disc with SP2 that I could borrow at some future point if necessary?

Re: LIES!

[identity profile] dredpiraterober.livejournal.com 2006-06-28 04:01 pm (UTC)(link)
The main issue I have is the heat. The thing produces an insane amount of heat. The upshot of this is, you cannnot...CANNNOT use this thing on your lap. It's just not feasible. There also parts of it which get so hot, that touching them with your skin is quite uncomfortable (I can show you some time if you ever come by).

Other issues, there is a high pitch whinning noise at all times. Some people have come up with hacks to get around it, but no one hack seems to work for everyone yet.

There is the "mooing" sound. I haven't actually noticed this, but many people complain that one of the fans has an issue where it will start up and stop about every 3 seconds creating a mooing type sound. It's probably happening on mine and I just don't listen for it.

THe wireless BLOWS. When it's not dropping the signal, it's range for wireless is poor. The dropping the signal thing was a lot worse, until they released an update which seems to have made it a little better

Did I mention the heat? It's a really big problem. Especially now that it is warm out, the thing is a little uncomfortable to use, due to the fact that one of the places that heats up on the thing is where you would rest your left wrist while typing.

In terms of the whinning and the wireless, I have heard that apple has a new main circuit board which gets rid of these defects, but I have not heard any official word or anything

Conclusion? Hold off. Wait for the next versions. Also, why do you want a mac when everything else you work with is windows? Just curious.

Re: LIES!

[identity profile] dredpiraterober.livejournal.com 2006-06-28 04:02 pm (UTC)(link)
And yes I have an XP SP2 disc you could use at some point in the future

Re: LIES!

[personal profile] desh 2006-06-28 06:00 pm (UTC)(link)
I'd want a Mac because they have good hardware, fake linux support (i.e. I can run command line things when I really want to), good tech support, and Boot Camp. Plus they happen to be the cheapest sub-14" computers around (though I so wish they had a 12" line still).

I'll wait to hear from my friends with non-Pro MacBooks about whether these issues are still present. Thanks for alerting me about them.

Re: LIES!

[identity profile] dredpiraterober.livejournal.com 2006-06-28 06:15 pm (UTC)(link)
When I first heard about bootcamp, I thought it would be awesome. But now what it is out, and I have a MacBook pro, I found I didn't really care. Why would I want to boot windows on my macbook pro?
What I found infinitely more helpful is the parallels virtual machine software. Now I can run XP inside of OSX, and it runs ridiculously fast. I dunno how they do it (leprachauns perhaps?) but it goes fast.

Re: LIES!

[personal profile] desh 2006-06-28 06:28 pm (UTC)(link)
Sounds like Xen. I'd probably try both that and BootCamp. But in any case, didn't I answer your "hy do you want a mac when everything else you work with is windows" question?
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