Anyone Have a New Macbook Pro?

Just curious. Trying to justify the cost vs my new i3 Vaio laptop which runs perfectly.

RMX

 

How new? I have a macbook pro core2 duo 15" with 8gb ram and 500gb hard disk and non glare screen. love it, love it, love it. i run vmware on it so i have both windows and mac os humming along. have had it since last june, not a single virus, not a single crash. i reboot about one every month or two. wow. what a change from the pc world.

the mag safe connector is fantastic. every other laptop mfr should license this technology. i must have tripped over it a dozen times so far, not a problem. with my other laptops, i went through power supply after power supply and repair after repair. and the viruses, upgrades, conflicts, crashes...i am sooooo glad i am done with that crap. i have a dell laptop right now, and an hp one, both with problems. i just don't feel like wasting two more hours of my life on that crap, so they are sitting on a shelf, gathering dust. one day i will reformat the ****ers and give them to guests' kids to play games on, i guess. they are too new and expensive to throw away.

only complaint would be the battery life is only 2.5 hours. wish it was closer to 6. i am thinking of upgrading to ssd disks at some point. oh, one more complaint, the hinge is "loose" in that it flops forward too easily. apple claims it's not a problem, but the internet is full of people with the same complaint.

i also use it to pipe out hd movies to my 60" TV over hdmi. fantastic!

i do hate the lit apple logo on the back. if they want me to advertise for them, they can bloody well pay me. i have stuck a sticker on it, and i also have a black plastic cover on the computer by speck design. if there was a pc company i liked, i would put their logo on it. right now, it just says Ducati.

if your laptop is working fine, save your money. if not, upgrade to apple.

 

I just switched from a Vaio. I've had a 15" 2.3ghz quad core Macbook Pro for about 2 weeks. I'm new to Mac OS. I got out the toolkit and replaced the 750gig 5400rpm HD with a faster 7200rpm 750gig and increased the ram to 8gb. I installed the old HD in an external 2.5" firewire case and am using it for backup.

The Mac's windows and type size are tough for my old eyes to see so I got a 27" Mac Cinema Display which is terrific. The brightness on both the 27" and the 15" are adjustable and both are the brightest monitors I've ever owned. The trackpad is a delight. Operationally the trackpad it is very close to if not identical to the screen on my wife's iPhone.

I bought the laptop at an Apple store, and the monitor from Amazon. Should have bought them both at Amazon. Good to save the CA sales tax.

Transferring my data/calendar/contacts from Outlook 2010 to Outlook 2011 was a. major. PITA. Techs at the Apple were of limited help. Turns out there just is no easy way and I tried so many different methods I couldn't tell you now what all the steps were.

I am having some issues with the external drive, likely related to the drive running hot in the case. Maybe I'll glue a couple of big heat sinks to it and see if that helps. If not I'll just use it for off-site backup storage.

Apple's reliance on their (excellent) built-in search facility is challenging to someone like me who is used to the folder/sub-folder method common in windows, but I've figured a workaround which is so far so good.

Contrary to the 2.5 hours mentioned in an earlier post, I'm getting about 5 hours on the batter.

My impression so far is it is generally a lot more elegant machine -- hardware and OS -- than Vaio running windows.

 

What software are you running and what is your screen brightness set to when you get 5 hours?

If you put two fingers on the trackpad and move them apart, away from each other, it magnifies the font size and images in browsers. Very, very nice zoom feature that makes it a lot easier to read if something is too small.

I had a tough time with the mac folder layout and window controls and resizing option being available in just one corner as well. I still do. If something is getting in the way too much, I just switch to vmware and fire up the windows virtual machine and off I go.

 

I looked into grabbing one. Two deal killers:

Apple SSD is SATA 3Gb/s only. No TRIM support for other SSD's, so no SATA 6Gb/s and TRIM love. Lion might fix this.

No Quick Sync support for video xcoding.

So I'm going to have to wait for the Sandy Bridge based Thinkpads to come out. Not a bad thing, since they'll likely be $1000 cheaper for the same spec.

Apple always seems a foot away from greatness, and for the price they charge for these things, they should be sitting right in the middle of it. There is so very little work involved in certifying the next gen Intel and Crucial drives that it befuddles me Apple skipped this. The 400 MB/s + reads and writes of the Crucial C400 would have turned this into a monster and would have actually made Thunderbolt useful.

 

Zack

Screen brightness is about 50-55% right now. I don't adjust it much.

The tiny fonts that drive me nuts are not in the browser but in (at least some of) the really too small "save" windows which aren't "spreadable" (AFAIK). Being able to zoom in while in the browser is great....wish I knew how to make the increased font size stick when I use the forward/back buttons in the browser so I wouldn't have to spread again.

So far I haven't figured out why there isn't a "cut" with paste instead of only a "copy" with paste.

I'm curious too how others who use Macs for business get comfortable with using the search function rather than organizing into folders/subfolders. Maybe it is just me but the folder schema is hard to leave behind

 

I really like the new MBP. I'm specifically considering purchasing a 13'' version for my daily uses.

 

Why not just replace the Apple drive with a Crucial SSD? Get the smallest HDD they sell (I think it's 500gig) and replace it.

Reading a lot of stories about the i7s having major heat issues.

http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=160815

RMX

 

I have my screen brightness set to 90% or greater...might explain the difference in battery life.

I understand about the fonts.

Apple-x seems to work for cut, apple-c for copy, apple-v for paste?? I must not be understanding what you mean? Or maybe your apple-x keys are mapped to do something else?

You can get explorer for mac--it's pretty good and very cheap. I rarely use the search / spotlight function and I do organize my work in folders. There are also other windows-type utilities also.

Let me know about copy,,.that is one thing I do have and you should too.

 

Zack

I think with 90% brightness setting I’d have to be wearing sunscreen.

On the “cut” vs. “copy” issue, I can do it within Word, no problem. An example of what I am experiencing would be opening the downloads folder from the dock, and selecting a file which has been recently downloaded. I can copy it and paste it where I like, but I don’t know of a way to “cut” and paste it. The difference is that if I copy instead of cut, I still have to move the file from downoads to trash: a further but seemingly unnecessary step.

I will look into explorer, thanks.

 

Ah, I see what you mean. I guess Apple wants you to "drag" rather than cut and paste to effect a move. Who knows, I totally agree with you. A lot of things that Apple does make no sense to PC people. I am in that camp. It's interesting to see the converse at Apple stores, my questions and concerns are just not understood by Apple folk, and I am often met with responses like "Why would you want to do that?"

I don't know how they manage their files. I don't know how they work with windows side by side.

I am guessing that they get the same thing done some other way, 'cos the way we do it on the PC side sure don't work!

I run VMWare, and often resort to windows. I do my photo and media management in Windows 7.

 

Now that I think about it, the copy and then delete thing is rather annoying, I guess I have just gotten used to it that I don't notice anymore. One thing I have been praying for is a tabbed finder. I like drag and dropping, but it'd be sooooo much easier if you could have tabs, keep one open for where the item is and one for were it's going.

 

Ok so within seconds of searching for tabbed finder I found this:

http://totalfinder.binaryage.com/

Tabbed finder windows and file cut and paste, just like you guys were looking for.

 

Chris

Look for something in google? What a novel concept!

Thanks. I'll DL when I get home.

 

Who woulda thought.

 

Our small firm runs Apple computers exclusively. I can tell you that in a commercial setting, our Apple laptops have been less than impressive from a hardware standpoint. All 5 of Apple macbook and macbook pro laptops that are in circulation at any given time have had one hardware failure or another in their respective 3 year service life. As I can recall, we have had 2 logic board failures, 1 keyboard failure and two memory failures, to say nothing of the half dozen or so power cords we have gone through. Granted, our laptops run 24 hours a day and constantly being dragged from one client site to another, but I have still been less than impressed with the quality of the components. By contrast, we have never had a failure of any kind of any of our Apple office computers (IMACS), Apple system accessories (time machines, etc) or our Apple Server.

Why do we still use them you ask?

Because the operating system is sublime, the systems work seamlessly together and I can't recall ever having our computer system crash. To us, its worth the occasional hassle. Besides, our local dealer is very good to us and our computers are never out of service for more than 48 hours max.

Just my .02

 

One of my favorite things about Apple is that when you do have an issue, at least for me, it's been very easily rectified. Their customer service is by far the best I have ever come across.

 

+1. For a business it really is a no brainer. No matter how grave the failure, no computer in my office has ever been out of commission for more than 48 hours.

Also, I really can't stress enough how important the stability of the platform is in a business environment. We don't have to deal with Viruses, hardware conflicts, software crashes or any of the other nonsense my colleagues with Microsoft based systems do.

I just wish Apple would use better quality hardware in their macbooks/macbook pros.

 

Yes, it's a no-brainer for business. And with the tax write-off, the cost also becomes less of an issue.

I wish Apple would look at some things that Windows does right, and put them in the Mac OS.

 

The price is one of the complaints that I never understood, the whole "Macs are too expensive thing" has never sit right with me. Comparing the hardware directly with another vendor like Dell or HP, it's about $200-300 more for the Mac. That difference is easily made-up with the production difference between the 2 companies, let alone the Mac OS.

Joe, I think many of your laptop problems are probably just because of heavy usage and moving around. I've noticed most Mac laptops that get heavy usage usually just sit on a desk and the ones that move around a lot are used more casually. Luckily you have a good dealer near you. Mine is usually always on, but 90% of the time is hooked up to my monitor.

 

I make music and have done just fine with a PC. I have see-sawed over the years between Macs and PCs. To me I think the internals of a modern laptop are very similar. This thing is going to cost me over $2k just to set up in my studio (15" MBP + 27" monitor + multi-TT USB hub, etc) vs about $400 to set up my new i3 Vaio (27" monitor + TT USB hub).

They're f'n expensive IMO. I do like the design and OS, though.

RMX

 

How? The cheapest Vaio I found is $550, and one that is on par with the 15" MBP is not a whole lot cheaper.

 

I already have the Vaio. It's 2 months old.

RMX

 

Gotcha, I thought you meant starting from scratch.

 

I've had a 13" MBP for a bit more than a year now, with zero issues and heavy usage. Approx. $900 as a factory refurbished, it is very compact for travel, but large enough for the print, web and (low production) video I do. Hardly ever touch my desktop system any longer.