Monday, February 02, 2009

Praise for the MacBook

After using Apple's "unibody" MacBook (what MacRumors.com calls "Revision F") for a little over a month, I'm ready to say it's a fine piece of engineering and one of the best machines I've ever owned.

It's not perfect. Apple chose a slightly mediocre LCD screen, but at least it's LED-backlit. It'd be real nice to have an ExpressCard/34 slot, which is missing. (That'd help cope with the lack of Firewire, wide area wireless, and memory card slot.) I cannot get LEAP wireless to work consistently, and I have to reboot to switch between wireless and wired ethernet for some reason, so I'm still trying to figure out Mac OS X's networking. Also, the MacBooks are a bit overpriced, especially the 2.4 GHz model. (I don't really understand why anybody would buy the 2.4 GHz model. The 2.0 GHz model is a much better value, particularly if you can shop around and get at least some small discounts and/or rebates.)

All that said, the aluminum MacBook seems to be a rugged and reliable machine. It runs cool to the touch (Apple chose some good CPUs), the touchpad works very well (once you get used to it), the weight is reasonable (4.5 lbs.), performance is good (including graphics performance), the keyboard is nice, battery life seems quite reasonable, and it "just works."

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