dandino's Full Review: Apple (MC226LL/A) 17 in. Mac Notebook
I’ve been a PC user for my personal computer for 16 years and I’ve worked with Macs professionally on and off for 9 years. I was never a Windows fanboy or a Mac fanboy, I’ve always just wanted a machine that will do it’s job. When my 4 year old Dell laptop had a box fall on it from a shelf, my boss offered me a new laptop. I was aware that he was a massive fan of anything Apple, so I decided to go Mac so that I could load it up on features without any grief from him. This is what I got:
17” Antiglare MacBook Pro 3.06GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 8GB 1.07GHz RAM 256GB SSHD The rest of the features were the standard options that I won’t bore you with. FIRST IMPRESSION It is a pretty and sleek looking machine which is deceptively light. Getting a 17”-er, I was expecting more heft to it. This was a pleasant surprise. The keyboard was nicely spaced out, I like the shallow depth of the keys. The only bad thing is that it is a little awkward with my watch always scratching it when I rest my wrists on it, however most of my time on it involves a docking station. The computer is unbelievably fast. Between the processor, solid state hard drive, and RAM, this thing never even flinches regardless of the task, however I have yet to install the really demanding (windows only) scientific software that will truly strain it. LAYOUT The screen is quite beautiful, crisp, vibrant. My scenic wallpapers appear so immersive. It makes it easy to have multiple windows side by side in small text without having to worry about the text look grainy and difficult to read. The individually illuminated keys are great for presentations or any dark situation where you would need to find a key. The multitouch track pad, oh what a beautiful aspect. It’s massive, the entire thing is a button that you can push at any point (although much easier at the bottom than the top), and multi touch. One finger points, two fingers scroll, 3 fingers go back/forward in any browser, and 4 fingers goes from windows to desktop. It makes live so much nicer.
But not all is rosy. I need this machine as a workstation, and the 3 tightly packed USBs are so close that you can not actually use all three at the same time. Fortunately for me, I have it hooked up in a way where I get 5 additional ports when I dock. I’m amazed such a glaring flaw got through their design. I also was disappointed with the lack of a SD card reader, which was replaced with an Expresscard/34 slot. It was not difficult to get an expresscard to read SD cards. This is really just a preference, I’m sure there are many that would find this to be a pro. BATTERY Does it really last 8 hours? Yes and no. If you dim the screen, turn off the keyboard LED’s, don’t need Wifi, and switch to the slower graphics card, it will about 8. But a more reasonable estimate would be 4-5, which is still very very impressive. It also very quick to recharge. Speaking of charging, I love the plug. It can have one part removed to reduce cord clutter and plug into the wall. If you are on a crowded strip, you can use the extension so that the power converter is away from the outlet itself. PORTING DATA FROM PC I must say that this was a nightmare. Most of this nightmare was the fault of iTunes. I have never purchased anything from iTunes, as I hate anything DRM. It refused to transfer/recognize about 20% of my sizable MP3 library. This required me to manually instruct it where each song was. It would take some tracks of a CD, but not all. I called Apple for help, and they had no advice. I also used Picasa to organize my photos. I gave iPhoto a chance. It was very nice at first, it had a fun facial recognition software to find all the pictures of your wife/kid/niece/etc. But it stored all your photos in a database instead of individual jpg’s. How am I going to upload these to facebook? How am I going to order prints from Snapfish? How am I going to give my mother the entire folder of pictures from the birthday party? I got frustrated and eventually took everything back to Picasa. Other than that, all of my professional material moved over flawlessly. OSX So, the system is speedy already, and much of that is likely due to Snow Leapord (and the hefty hardware). It is a fast, crisp, and mostly intuitive operating system. I’m mostly a Windows guy, but I’ve been on every version of Apple’s OS’s since 2000. This version and it’s predecessor is the first one that has not made me angry. If you are looking to upgrade from a Pre-Intel Mac, I think it is time. It is very easy to use, and finding what you need is a breeze. It is honestly going to come down to personal preference on this one. It definitely ahead of Vista with the annoying popups and balloons always informing you of every process, but other than that I find both OS’s to be comparable in ease of use. STARTUP/WAKEUP Again, look at the specs. This machine should be capable of launching the shuttle. It does not disappoint. It starts up in about 45 seconds from a full shutdown. When you wake it up from just closing the lid, you’re up and running in under 5 seconds. This includes connecting to Wifi. But sometimes Safari doesn’t like waking up and will lock up for about 30 seconds. This quick wake up is very nice when you are going around work and need to show someone some data. I very much like the speed that this works at. THE HYPE The question for most is weather to get Mac or PC. Are PCs really that bad? No. Are Macs really that good? No. I’ll try to control my utter contempt for the fools that keep putting those stupid adds on TV and various web sites. This is a beautiful laptop. It works wondrously. I’m glad that my computer broke the week that my boss found out he was getting two grants and he purchased this for me without hesitation. But the truth is that it still crashes. I have to restart the machine every time I want to use iMovie. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like turning on. Safari is still not compatible with too many web sites. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like recognizing my mouse. My coworkers have two additional machines of the same specs. All 3 of them have issues, as does every PC. No machine is perfect, nor is any software. I accept the fact that nothing will ever work perfectly. In that context, the machine works quite well for what I need it to do. The most important thing to consider is how well your machine with its software will work for you. I find that the hype of Apple and the fanboys portrays these computers as some sort of holy destination for all things digital. For a person such as myself, that damages the brand. It makes them seem like snake oil salesmen. It is a computer, nothing more. They have tried to elevate it to a level that no consumer product could ever reach. And while it is a great product without question, it is still just a laptop.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 4500 Operating System: Macintosh Processor: Other Processor speed: over 1000 Screen Size: Greater than 15 inches RAM: More than 256 Internal Storage: CD-RW and DVD Hard Drive (GB): Over 50
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