[elbles]

Hey all,

It's been a long time since I've posted here, and therein is part of the problem. I've had a PowerBook G4 for about four years now, and while it's been a great computer, it's getting a little old, and I'm a little sick of having a Dell Latitude laying around for when I need to run Windows apps.

Of course, this leads to the logical conclusion that buying a MacBook Pro is the way to go. But I do have a few concerns that might be laid to rest by some of you, if you have a moment or two.

1. How much hotter do the latest MacBook Pros run, compared to, say, a 1.5GHz PBG4? My father has one of the original Core Duo MBP's, and that thing runs a LOT hotter than my PowerBook G4. I've heard and read that MacBook Pros have actually started to run a little cooler since their original release (by virtue of the C2D chips being more energy efficient, IIRC), but any commentary would be welcome, especially those who have made the jump from a PBG4 directly to one of the latest MBPs.

2. The last base model of the last rev of the MBPs had 4 megabytes of L2 cache split between the two cores, whereas the latest base model has 3 megabytes split between the two cores. Is this enough reason to consider the previous rev, when the toughest task I'll have running will be VMWare Fusion, Parallels, or possibly XCode/gcc? (The former two would benefit the most from lots of L2 cache, I think)

3. Any other thoughts or comments would be welcome. I'll likely be buying a new machine towards the end of the summer, unless someone suggests otherwise or the last rev would be a good fit for me, and I'll have a university student discount to apply towards the purchase, which will certainly include AppleCare.

Like I said earlier, it's been a long time since I've posted here, and I haven't quite kept up with the product the way I should have, but hopefully, some good comments will pop up. Or at least some comments to give me some terms to throw into the search box.

[MartiNZ]

I made this upgrade six weeks ago, going from a 12" PBG4 1.5GHz to a mid-range 15" 2.5GHz C2D MBP, with 4GB RAM and the 7200 RPM HD option.

The MBP is as you suggest A LOT hotter than the G4. I was able to use the G4 comfortably as a laptop for as long as I liked; with the C2D I hardly even dare to. When 'pushed', e.g. after a couple of hours playing WoW, it's even uncomfortable using the keyboard, and that's with plenty of room for airflow at the backside.

Re L2 cache, I think it's more a reason to not go for the base model than to go for the last rev. My machine has the 6MB shared, but I have no means for comparison - but it does seem silly to go for the 3 in light of the old 4, so maybe a mid-range last gen could be worthwhile. For Parallels/VMware I think the main thing is to have as much RAM as you can. I've barely played with those though.

You didn't mention your G4's size, but for me the increase from 12" to 15" took a bit of getting used to, but when I had, looking at the 12" I could hardly take it seriously.

I assume this is the same as on the aluminium G4s, but one other thing I find is that the right USB port is in the worst place I can imagine. I loved the all-on-the-left style of the 12"s / iBooks / MBs ... but now I've bought a wireless mighty mouse (and probably will get a wireless keyboard, to avoid that heat I mentioned for a start).

Good luck with your decision & purchase.

[elbles]

Thanks for the reply, MartiNZ.

I was afraid of the heat issue, and I guess it's still very pronounced, at least relative to the PBG4 (that was one of the reasons I was looking for commentary from people who have gone directly from a G4 to a C2D). Fortunately, I use my laptops at a desk most of the time, with an external keyboard (just got one of these new Apple aluminum keyboards -- Not quite sure how I like this external MacBook keyboard just yet, heh), an external mouse, and another LCD to boot. But, it's still a laptop, and on occasion, it might make the trip to class, where the heat will be an issue. I guess there's only one way to find out if it'll bother me or not...

As for the L2 cache, it's a tough call for me. It's another $500 for double the L2 cache, double the graphics RAM, and 50 gigabytes more of hard disk space. Combine the three, and I seriously doubt I'd notice the difference, though I do think, for my purposes, the difference in cache would make the largest difference. And just taking a look at the MacWorld review of the latest models, even the entry-level model (the one with the 3 MB L2 cache) was still quicker than the previous generation.

As for my PowerBook, it is a 15" model, so the replacement will be almost identical in size, though I'll need a new sleeve for it, I suppose. I always liked the portability of the 12" PBG4, but couldn't stand the small screen. The 17" was just too large to use on a lap, let alone a few of the desks that I use. The 15" was Just Right™ four years ago, and I think the same will hold true this year.

In any event, I certainly appreciate the reply. Good luck getting used to the heat -- Despite the price, I think Apple's keyboard is a pretty good choice, and while I might get hate mail for saying so on an Apple site, I've always found Microsoft's mice to be some of the best (their wired variety, anyway).

[packet of krisps]

I made the same transition to the MBP in my signature, before I even think about playing a game, or opening aperture, etc. I use SMC fan control, and run the fans on full blast, because the GPU contributes siginficantly to the heat. SMC is great, because of these same heat issues, the temperature is constantly displayed on the menubar and if it gets too hot for your liking (60 degrees for me) I adjust the fans to my liking.

The speed difference is amazing between the two, heat is one of the only issues, and shouldn't discourage you from making the right choice.

MartiNZ has the right idea about the cache, I couldn't have said it better myself. I also think the fact that all the ports are split on both sides of the MBP is a bit of an annoyance, but again, it is just something you have to deal with. I had the 12" PowerBook as well, it died on my a couple of weeks ago.

As for running Windows, if you don't need to run those programs much at all, just install it in a boot camp partition, it's what I do.

[mduell]

Originally Posted by elbles 

2. The last base model of the last rev of the MBPs had 4 megabytes of L2 cache split between the two cores, whereas the latest base model has 3 megabytes split between the two cores. Is this enough reason to consider the previous rev, when the toughest task I'll have running will be VMWare Fusion, Parallels, or possibly XCode/gcc? (The former two would benefit the most from lots of L2 cache, I think)

No. Unless you know that what you do is sensitive to cache size, you shouldn't even think about it. Anandtech says: "Back when Intel offered Core 2 CPUs with a 2MB L2 cache, we generally saw an 4 - 10% difference between them and the 4MB parts, averaging closer to 4%. Assuming performance scales linearly with cache size, the 3MB L2 chips should be marginally slower than the 4MB counterparts they replace."
So the difference between 3 & 4MB is ~2% on average and at worst ~5%. $500 for a few Mhz, a meg of cache, double the VRAM, and +50GB is not a good ideal unless you're certain that one of those will make a big difference in your computing experience (unlikely). OTOH the previous generation refurbs are a great deal, ~27% off the price of a new one for very marginal differences.

Originally Posted by elbles 

3. Any other thoughts or comments would be welcome. I'll likely be buying a new machine towards the end of the summer, unless someone suggests otherwise or the last rev would be a good fit for me, and I'll have a university student discount to apply towards the purchase, which will certainly include AppleCare.

AppleCare is a terrible value; buy with a credit card and your warranty is already extended 2 years by the card issuer. The probability of a part failing and being covered by warranty (not accidental damage) and being more expensive than the price of AppleCare (pretty much just the logic board and the display) is quite low.

[elbles]

I love it when my session times out before I can submit a reply...

Anyway, thanks for the replies, packet of krisps and mduell.

I had my dad install SMC on his MBP when he got it and complained about the heat. It certainly helped, at the cost of extra noise. The PBG4 never really had this issue, but it's time to make the tradeoff for the phenomenal increase in speed, I suppose.

As for Boot Camp, I love being able to double-click on VMWare or Parallels, and have Windows sitting in a window. Rebooting takes a lot of time, and gets me away from my e-mail, SSH sessions to servers, web browsers (loaded full with all kinds of sites), and lots of other stuff. I use VMWare Workstation on my Windows laptop to keep a few instances of Linux and Solaris just a click away, and it'd be even better to have it running at something nearer native speed (my Windows laptop is a P3 1.2 GHz with 512 MB of RAM, FWIW).

And mduell, I think you pretty much convinced me about the cache issue. I really didn't think it would make much sense to spend the extra $500, but my PB has been a decent machine considering the amount it cost and the amount of time it has been (and still is) useful to me. If that $500 were enough to get me another year or two out of the MBP, it might be worth it, but it just doesn't seem as though it would. My thought with the L2 cache actually goes back to the days of PPC machines running Virtual PC, where you might have been able to use the L2 cache to store translated x86 instructions, but such an application doesn't really make sense any more, does it? (I thought about it... After I originally posted.)

As for AppleCare, it's actually come in handy with the PB. In the span of two months, it had the keyboard, the LCD, and the hard drive replaced in succession, on three separate occasions. Since then, the keyboard and hard drive have each been replaced once or more (I can't quite remember for sure). All of this was covered under AppleCare, and each time, I called up, got a box via DHL the next day, and usually received it back two days after that. I'd try my credit card company out, but I love the way AppleCare has worked for me, and especially the speed with which it has worked. I'm probably stupid for getting it again, but I'm sure I've done far worse.

Once again, I certainly appreciate the replies. Thanks!

[MartiNZ]

I agree re AppleCare = good, and after the experience with my PBG4 I won't be without it again. It had its logic board fail 13 months after purchase - thankfully they wangled that fix to still be under warranty , but it died again six months later and the machine sat useless for another six or so.

Eventually my brother suggested I try getting it fixed under consumer guarantees, and the retailers actually fixed it in-house - 'repaired a cold solder' or something. So I was lucky in the end, but AppleCare would still have been really sensible and saved a lot of effort and stuff. Even the G4's hard drive failure in February would have just made it (2 years, 11 months that would have been), whereas the replacement cost me $NZ250, almost half the cost of AppleCare in itself.

Sitting pretty with the MBP and APP .

I never heard of the credit card extending warranty thing. Is that international?

Re boot camp, Vista starts up pretty fast I find, but I know what you mean about the annoyance of having to shut everything down. Really the only option for games though, and that would be a big reason for my restarting, if I hadn't just had a readdiction to WoW ><.

[mduell]

Originally Posted by elbles 

And mduell, I think you pretty much convinced me about the cache issue. I really didn't think it would make much sense to spend the extra $500, but my PB has been a decent machine considering the amount it cost and the amount of time it has been (and still is) useful to me. If that $500 were enough to get me another year or two out of the MBP, it might be worth it, but it just doesn't seem as though it would. My thought with the L2 cache actually goes back to the days of PPC machines running Virtual PC, where you might have been able to use the L2 cache to store translated x86 instructions, but such an application doesn't really make sense any more, does it? (I thought about it... After I originally posted.)

Not spending the $500 means you can replace the machine in 3(.2) years instead of 4 with the same budget. A 2% performance difference is not going to let you get another year of life out of the machine. Cache was more important when you needed to cache instruction translations, but also when you had much smaller caches. We're now looking at a base model with 3-6x the cache the larger cache G4 had.

Originally Posted by MartiNZ 

I never heard of the credit card extending warranty thing. Is that international?

I don't know; it's pretty standard with Visa and Amex in the states.

[elbles]

MartiNZ: Not being any kind of a gamer has its advantages, I suppose.

mduell: My thinking with the extra years with a better equipped machine is that it would be useful with newer operating systems on account of having slightly beefier hardware. I vaguely remember Apple saying that they recommended a minimum of 128 MB of GRAM for Leopard, though I couldn't find that on a quick search. If 512 MB were the minimum in four years, then maybe it'd be worth it. But then, I'm getting quite a bit ahead of myself.

The challenge now is deciding whether to buy a clearance model now and finance it, or buy a new model at the end of the summer for more money, but in cash. Too bad no one seems willing to apply student discounts to clearance models, heh...

[slpdLoad]

I moved from a first-rev 15" PB G4 to a last rev refurb 15" MBP a month ago.

I've had the opposite experience with heat. For the majority of my uses, the MBP is significantly cooler than the G4. I can spend hours surfing the web, using a few apps, and listening to iTunes, and it's much cooler than the G4. The MBP seems to only really heat up when I use the GPU, such as if I watch hulu or something for a couple of hours with the MBP on my lap. Still though, it's only getting as hot as the G4 did with low-moderate usage. In general I've been pleasantly surprised by the temps I'm getting.

I would also argue that AppleCare is well worth it for the pro laptops. I had my screen replaced on the G4 under AppleCare, and I think I was without the computer for maybe 3 days (diagnosed over the weekend, sent it Monday, got it back Wednesday). Try getting that kind of a return with a credit card company's red tape. The ability to call tech support is also nice if you have any problems - you'll get a lot more help than if you don't have AppleCare.

[mduell]

Originally Posted by elbles 

mduell: My thinking with the extra years with a better equipped machine is that it would be useful with newer operating systems on account of having slightly beefier hardware. I vaguely remember Apple saying that they recommended a minimum of 128 MB of GRAM for Leopard, though I couldn't find that on a quick search. If 512 MB were the minimum in four years, then maybe it'd be worth it. But then, I'm getting quite a bit ahead of myself.

By the time you get to the point that you're not meeting the recommended (or minimum) VRAM, you're already so far behind the performance curve it's time to buy a new machine.

I'd expect the original Core Duo machines with integrated graphics to meet the minimums for 10.7, but I wouldn't want to run it on a machine with 2GB RAM.

[SierraDragon]

I went from a 1.67 GHz PB to a 2.33 GHz C2D MBP and I consider the heat argument pretty much nonsense. My G3 Wallstreet PB was the hottest laptop I have had. The MBP runs much cooler in comparison and certainly no hotter than the G4 PB did.

Note that heat is a consequence of powerful hardware and performance. If one is troubled by heat it is easy enough to knock down the performance or use a cooling laptop pad.

Applecare overall is not a life cycle cost effective purchase, anecdotal reports notwithstanding. Most repairs occur under free warranty during year one. At US$349 just to cover 13-36 months, one is paying a lot just to deal with hardware failures on a box old enough that its value has already depreciated greatly.

At a minimum, buyers should wait 11.5 months to even consider Applecare; at that time spending $350 on an aging box may not seem like such a good idea (unless one bought a lemon that has repeatedly been to the shop already). Don't worry, Apple will remind you by sending multiple emails begging you to buy Applecare as you approach 12 months because the profit on Applecare sales is huge.

Buying Applecare is like playing a perverse reverse lottery, and like a lottery the math does not even remotely compute, but obviously it makes some folks feel good. Giving one's $349 to Apple a year in advance of coverage is even less logical. Personally I think everyone but me should buy Applecare so Apple makes lots of unearned money and can keep prices down...

-Allen Wicks

[elbles]

Thanks for all the additional replies, everyone.

As an aside, I find it amazing what hardware requirements are like these days, as they just keep increasing and increasing, with seemingly little gained in software functionality (i.e. XP->Vista). Keep in mind I'm not that old (I'm 22), but when 2 GB of RAM might not be enough in a few years to look at web pages and read e-mail, it really makes me wonder what happened to efficient usage of resources from a developer's point of view. There was a time that hardware simply couldn't keep up with software, but I truly believe it's mostly developers not caring much about efficiency anymore. But I've digressed...

I am glad to hear that at least a few people have noticed the latest MBPs running cooler than the latter generations of PBG4s, as that was a large concern of mine. It seems they did at least get them running a little cooler after the initial release with the original Core Duo processor. Assuming the same software, native to each processor architecture, and excluding things like VMWare and Parallels, if a MacBook Pro and a PowerBook G4 (of 15 inch screen size in both cases) run at about the same temperature, I'll be very happy.

As for AppleCare, my parents bought it along with my PBG4 as a high school graduation present, so I had no say in the matter at that time, nor did I mind having it in retrospect. For what it's worth, the first time it went in for repairs was 1 year and 5 months into my ownership of it, and considering all that was replaced on it, I was very, very happy to have it. And considering that it has been babied its entire life, I can't attribute any of the failures to user error. Oh, and while the education price of AppleCare is a little easier to swallow, but hey, if it keeps SierraDragon happy... :-P :-)

[B Gallagher]

I just upgraded from a 15" PB to a 15" MBP about 3 months ago. The two are so similar that I sometimes forget I upgraded!

If you've got any more questions, please feel free to ask.

[SierraDragon]

Originally Posted by elbles 

...when 2 GB of RAM might not be enough in a few years to look at web pages and read e-mail, it really makes me wonder what happened to efficient usage of resources from a developer's point of view. There was a time that hardware simply couldn't keep up with software, but I truly believe it's mostly developers not caring much about efficiency anymore...

My guess is that it is market economics. With RAM cheap and fast, why not use it rather than spending expensive engineering resources and time to refine code efficiency. While you are busy spending time and money making your code run well under less RAM your competitor may grab your market share.

-Allen Wicks

[SierraDragon]

Originally Posted by B Gallagher 

I just upgraded from a 15" PB to a 15" MBP about 3 months ago. The two are so similar that I sometimes forget I upgraded!

I guess it depends on what one uses the laptop for. I made a similar upgrade a year and a half ago. As an Aperture, Photoshop, etc. user not a day goes by that I am not fully aware how far superior the MBP is.

-Allen Wicks

[elbles]

Well, I decided to just go ahead and get the damn thing already, and picked it up today. I picked up the base model MBP with the matte screen, along with a copy of VMWare. I wasn't sure what to expect in terms of speed, but I am shocked at how much faster simple things (Safari, Entourage) are compared to my PowerBook, which had 1 GB of RAM. I wasn't fond of the UI changes in Leopard, when I first saw them, but after a few hours of using it, they're slowly growing on me. All in all, a purchase that will be well worth it, I think...

Oh, and SierraDragon, I would definitely agree with you there. I just wish it wasn't that way, you know? As someone who still uses a 70 MHz SPARCstation 5 with 32 MB of RAM for something kind of useful (backup mail server for a very small domain), I appreciate efficiency, heh.

Thanks again for all commentary...