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GoDucks · May 23, 2006, 08:19 AM

Good morning,

By no means a scientific test or a detailed review but I thought I would share my experiences over the weekend with respect to the new MacBook. I'm a moderate user (Safari, iLife, MS Office, a little Dreamweaver and Photoshop, etc.) and have been a Powerbook user for the past 4 years. I started with a 1 Ghz Powerbook and switched a year or so later to a 12 Inch for the portability. I'm currently using a 1.5 Ghz Rev C 12 Inch Powerbook with 768 Megs of RAM. It's been feeling a little slow of late and I was waiting to see what the MacBooks were like before deciding what my next machine was going to look like.

I had an opportunity to play with the new MacBooks at the new Apple Store in Toronto over the weekend and here are my thoughts compared to my Powerbook.

(1) The screen seems huge. I know it's only an extra inch but with the widescreen, it seems so much bigger than my 12 Inch screen. Nice and bright too. I was concerned with the "Glossy" label but I would have no problems using the screen.

(2) It seemed a lot faster. granted I was not doing anything overly intensive but when i launched 7 apps at once, it handled it much more quickly than my 12 Inch Powerbook. (The MacBook I used did have 1 Gig of RAM in it.)

(3) I'm not yet sold 100% on the keyboard. There is nothing wrong with it - I'm just not used to as much space between the letters as the MacBook keyboard layout has.

Overall though, I was very impressed. Impressed enough to order one when I got home last night. I went with the white 2.0 Ghz with Superdrive. I actually preferred the look of th white one more and wanted a model with the Superdrive. I upgaded to 1 Gig of Ram but other than that, left it stock. All in all, I nice jump from my Powerbook. My shipping date is this Thursday

In chatting with the guy at the Apple Store, he told me that the low end White model and the Black model were the two biggest sellers to date at that store. 2 went out the door in the 30 minutes I was there yesterday.

As an aside, I recently (complements of these forums) became aware of NAS devices. I use my laptop at home via a wireless network and was running out of space on my 100 Gig drive on my Powerbook. For about the same price as I would have cost me to upgrade to the largest HD size available on the MacBook, I was able to order a NAS to connect to my wireless network giving me an extra 250 Gigs of storage space available.

fesdds · May 23, 2006, 09:28 AM

Congrats on the new Macbook! Finally got all of my iBook info transferred over to my Macbook. I to got the 1 gig and it seems fine. Maybe a little lagging in rosetta ( I run MS Office, quickbooks, payroll, and some light photoshop use), but it will be fine until these programs get upgraded. I'll have to look into these NAS devices. Got plenty of hard disk space on iMac for now, but with kids at home it is filling up quickly with video & pics.

CyberGreg · May 23, 2006, 10:14 AM

Ditto on the Congrats... I too am replacing my recently upgraded 12" PowerBook. I was just waiting for a wide screen small laptop and the MacBook is it. I agree completely on 1 and 2. I'm not a "keyboard" specialist and what little I've used it, it is just fine. I'm still getting used to the huge trackpad. It was great to see there's a universal build for SideTrack but I'm getting to like the two finger scroll so I may not need it.

Overall the machine flies and I'm still using it with 512MB (2GB on order). Safari seems very responsive and even Office X (Rosetta) seems almost the same as on my PowerBook. The screen, as you mentioned is huge compared to the 12" Powerbook and I really like the glossy finish.

For $1100 (I was one of those that bought the low end too) it is an incredible laptop.

PS Does anyone want to buy a 1.33Ghz, 1.25GB, 160GB, 8x DL SuperDrive, 12" PowerBook???
:-)

Oh and parallels Desktop (VM ware) runs great on the MacBook but you really need more than the stock 512MB with the 60-80 MB that the Video subsystem uses.

harrisjamieh · May 23, 2006, 10:18 AM

Isn't NAS over wireless going to be slow as hell - ie too slow to store Apps and video files on

iChelle · May 23, 2006, 06:55 PM

sorry to sound like a newb but what is NAS?
p.s. I too am upgrading from a 12" PB. It is a wonderful change

icruise · May 23, 2006, 08:34 PM

Network Attached Storage. Basically a hard drive that you connect to over the network instead of with USB or firewire.

iChelle · May 23, 2006, 10:21 PM

what a cool idea. thank you for the info.

GoDucks · May 24, 2006, 07:15 AM

To answer your question, yes I have found the NAS to be very slow...

I installed it last night and tested using a 100 Meg Video File. When I was sitting within 4 feet of the wireless router, I could transfer the file in a couple of minutes. When I moved further away (25-30 feet away) it was VERY slow. I'm really not sure why - it was connected using 100BaseT and using a 11.g network but it was VERY slow over a 25 foot distance. So much in fact that I'm going to pick up a smaller USB powered drive to connect to my Macbook as a replacement.

harrisjamieh · May 24, 2006, 07:29 AM

With 802.11g, the further you go from the router, the lesser the signal, and therefore the lesser the speed you are recieving. The speed jumps down at certain intervals, which are IIRC, 54, 48, 36, 24, 18, 12, 9, 6, 2, 1. For some reason, which I do not understand, wireless B, which has a rate of 11 MBPS, does not drop down, regardless of distance

CyberGreg · May 24, 2006, 08:09 AM

Actually all 802.11 wireless signals will scale back depending on the distance (signal strength / noise) from the base station.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11#802.11b

harrisjamieh · May 24, 2006, 08:27 AM

Originally Posted by CyberGreg

Actually all 802.11 wireless signals will scale back depending on the distance (signal strength / noise) from the base station.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11#802.11b

O right, never knew that - when I used to have wireless B, it seemed no matter how far I went from the router, as long as I was still in range I got 11 Mbps. With the router in the same place, and all equipment upgraded to wireless G, if I go to the same places where I went with the wireless B stuff, I get much less than 11 Mbps - around 5 ish

fisherKing · May 24, 2006, 08:38 AM

am holding out for a 12" pb replacement (yes i know this may not happen).

am fine with my 1.33 12" pb for now; have apple care for another year, so will wait until september or so, see what happens.

apple must know this! peeps who bought the 12" want small & light, but pro features.

the macbook is a nice machine, but:

larger
heavier
not "pro" specd

etc

am gonna wait... (well, am gonna try...)