I realize I'm about to open the floodgates of hate mail, but It's time I blog about my new laptop. As you know I was given a Macbook Pro, to help get me familiar with the Mac OS to help those Mac users on our network. With all the hype and mystery around Macs and the OSX I was waiting to be Wow'd but I must say I am not impressed.
Originally, It was my plan to do a 10 things I like about my new Mac, unfortunately I couldn't find 10 things. Then I thought I'd do a 5 things I like and 5 things I hate... couldn't find 5 things I like. Then I though maybe 3 things - now I figure I'll just tell it like it is....
My friend Brian encouraged me to list the upside items first, so this is for you Brian
The upside of the Mac....
Graphics are good.
The graphics are very nice, but no nicer than Lenovo that I gave up.
Backlit Keyboard
I like the lighted keyboard, it's a nice approach to working in the dark. It also has a light sensor to turn the backlight on.
Size and Weight
The size and weight of the MacBook Pro are nice. It seems like a good configuration. and the weight makes it good for carrying.
Speed
The MacBook Pro is plenty fast, and with 3gig of ram I'm able to run XP in parallels at a reasonable speed. It is however no faster than the Lenovo I gave up.
The downside of the Mac....
Battery Life
First thing and maybe the most painful thing is the battery life. It comes up short of any laptop I've used in the past 8 years. I wouldn't mind it so much but there is no place for an auxiliary battery. This makes it impractical for both the traveler and the guy who runs from meeting to meeting. It is possible to carry a second battery with you, but you can only charge one at a time and you must either plug your mac in or shut it off to swap batteries.
Safari Browser
Although the Safari Browser seems to be fast enough browsing the web, I can't use it to manage any of the web based appliances I have in my domain. Although I can use Firefox to do this, it means I must install some third party software to make it useful.
Microsoft Office
Although Word and Excel are very much unchanged in Office 04 for the Mac, Entourage comes up very short as a replacement for Outlook. Yes I know Microsoft is behind it... but it's still Mac's fault for not producing something better.
Giant One Button Mouse
Yeah, I'm going to complain about the classic one button mouse. If the Mac didn't have right clickable contextual menus I guess it wouldn't be an issue to me, but since there are contextual menus it seems stupid to me to limit my ability to right click. If I plug in a USB mouse with two or more buttons I can right click, so what's with this antiquated one button mouse... oh yeah I can turn on the three fingered right click, why I need three fingers to right click is beyond me.
Heat
The default fan settings are so low that the CPU temp runs at 140 degrees Fahrenheit and above. I'm certain this can't be good on the life of the CPU and it certainly isn't good on my leg. I installed SMCFANControl and changed the fan speeds to 3500 rpms which keeps the temp around 120 degrees... I'm sure it's not good on the lame-o battery but it saves my leg.
Appearance
Although the brushed aluminum looks sharp, it's very hard to keep clean. I'm constantly trying to keep it clean. Also the aluminum case dents at the slightest bump.
Wireless
At first I had some issues with wireless loosing the the encryption password, but for some unknown reason it stopped. However other Mac users have this happen from time to time on our wireless network and I have to reset the WPA password for them, this happened with WEP as well... it is only Mac users who have this issue, I wish I could find a way to keep this from happening.
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