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You are here: MacNN Forums > Hardware - Troubleshooting and Discussion > Mac Notebooks > My long journey from Good to Better to Best...

My long journey from Good to Better to Best...
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bishopazrael
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Join Date: Nov 2006
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Nov 22, 2006, 11:21 AM
 
So here's my tale. Take it for what it's worth.

I own and operate Space-Age Computers. We do the basic stuff. Windows repairs, spyware/virus removal, yada yada yada.

Anyways, I'd been using a 12" Powerbook G4. Great stuff. I LOVED that thing because it fit inside of my clipboard (think cop's clipboard, metal box for storing reports and such). Anyways I was carrying around that and an Acer Ferrari. That was a great laptop. So with the 2, I had the best of both worlds. The PB was for scheduling and payments and business stuff. The Acer was for scanning for virus' and doing repair work.

Then the day came that bootcamp was released. I KNEW it would be coming. It was just too much of a tempting target for steve to pass up. That same day, I wound up getting into a fenderbender with my VW. I've got an autodesk in the front seat and my Acer on it w/ GPS running. Out the window it goes. Thankfully it was covered w/ TAP from CompUSA. So in deciding what to do for me, my sales guy at Comp says.. by the way.. did you know bootcamp came out? Yessir I did, and the wheels turned to go from giving me another Acer to giving me store credit to apply towards a new MBP 1.83.

Well, that first MBP turned out to be the hottest thing ever. I picked it up after it had run all day long on my dinning room table and had burn blisters on my palm and fingers where they join the palm.. you know.. that cradle your hand makes to hold a lappy. Yeah. Burned. All along it. Bright red welts and 3 blisters.

So i was thinking on the way to the apple store.. wow.. my vw, my acer, now THIS! I show up at the genius bar and show them the lappy and my palm. He calmly asks me what I expect Apple to do about it. Well.. I just about fell off the stool! Needless to say, they held firm that the laptop was NOT a lappy, but indeed a "NOTEBOOK".. notice thequotes.. now imagine the store manager AND the genius doing the " " as they say "NOTEBOOK".

Yeah. Nice.

And my palm? Sorry. Nothing we can do. (thankfully it was my left palm, which I've since learned, is a bit desensitized to burns because of an incident previous where I had gone to a customers house and did wiring in a kitchen, and put my palm on a hot electric burner on her stovetop.)

Anyways, Somethingaweful.com had a thread on the Apple internal memo and the thermal paste (i've got a copy of the pdf for anyone that wants one). I wound up doing the repair work myself as apple stedfastly refused to help.. again. Thanks Apple.

So thermal paste applied, it seemed a bit cooler, but not much. So we come to recent weeks. I had decided to get another MBP. I tried using the old matte screen out in the daytime but it just would NOT show up. I was growning frustrated with what had become a deskbound laptop. I was determined to get a new one. So I went to the Apple store in ABQ Uptown. What to do? The front window had been smashed in and ALL their laptops stolen. OMG.

I had a choice, I could buy a refurb or I could get a macbook.

I stayed there for a while looking and browsing. I wound up going with a 2ghz C2D Macbook. Black.

It went back 6 days later. Why?

The black was a fingerprint magnet. Going from a 12" PB to a 15" MBP was great. But going from a 15" to a 13" was not so great. I had thought that the smaller size would go over well with me.

Or not.

So back it went. The manager, when she asked what was wrong, was SUPER helpful to the point where she didn't charge me a restock fee. I had told her I wanted to just buy a refurb, but that Apple had let something fall through the cracks. You cannot buy something from the refurb site and pay for it at a store! How bizarre! Anyways, I very nicely pointed out that restock fees were for people who returned something and then said "I'll be going to CompUSA" or the like. I told her I just wanted a refurbed MBP. She agreed and said she'd send a check out. At that point I got very creative and asked if she'd kindly put it on an Apple gift card. She thought for all of 2 seconds and agreed. A big thumbs up for the ABQ Uptown store.

I'm sitting here with a new (refurb from Apple.com) MBP 2ghz w/ 2gb and the glossy screen. What can I say? It's an amazing lappy. Yes. LAPTOP. The fans run, but I do NOT hear them. The laptop stays cool. I'll admit Im running fancontrol in the sysprefs. And the screen?

My wife, by far, quite the ... I just want a keyboard and mouse to play my yahoo word games... type. She came out today to bring me some coffee (thank you love), and she stopped and gasped. She asked what had I done to my laptop to fix the screen? I told her it was a new screen that Apple was using .. and she said.. oh.. it's like your Ferrari .. very shiney and bright!

Well from the mouths of babes! My whole point here is.. a few things.

1. Apple in the past had SUPERIOR customer care quality. Now that they're growing so fast, they're forced to backpedal a bit on what they can do. Fortunatly I know a guy who used to be a Genius (JC you ARE the man!) I think quite a few of us know him. Despite Apple's backpedaling, they're still a great company. I'm sure their service will come back up anytime now. I do feel that calling them notebooks and not laptops is just cheap copout.

But on that... Apple does have a few cracks in it's system. I'm sure it'll be worked out. A small bit of creative thinking when you're in a jam will do wonders. Just keep your cool and realize that they DO have a company line to tow. If you can give them an alternative to work with, do that.

2. For the matte vs glossy crowd. Please take this with a grain of salt. I browse the web, do emails, use iPhoto and iweb. My professional printing needs are done at a printers. I watch tv and do bittorrent downloads. I use frontrow for ALL of my entertainment needs (no cable, no TV, just bittorrent) The glossy wins, hands down. It is SO much brighter that it's unbelievable.

3. Using fancontrol .. I love it. It keeps my laptop cool and makes it a true laptop, not a desktop crammed into a laptop form. Again, Apple is copping out of dealing with the heat issue at first by saying "NOTEBOOK". Not cool. But the new laptops.. wow.. the heat issue IS under control. Keep in mind that all I've got running is
firefox
safari
dashboard
finder
timuktu pro
skype
adium
quicksilver
itunes
for heavier loads, yeah, expect your heat to go up. For the average surfer, you'll love the new breed of MBP's.

4. You dont know what you got till it's gone... to quote the musician. Lighted keyboard. Yeah. That actually was a BIG factor in returning the macbook. I didnt know how much I'd miss the keyboard of the mbp till it was too late.

5. Macbook's keyboard all together just had a bit of a ............ fischer price feel to it. Sorry. It felt like it belonged on one of those toy laptops you get for a 3 year old.

6. And this one is important. Use the TRANSFER ACCOUNT FROM A DIFFERENT MAC option when first booting up. This thing was great when setting up the macbook. I didnt use it for the macbook to MBP switch because a nice gent on the forums bought my 1st mbp.

Finally some thoughts. It was a lot of stress and money flying around. In the end, I did what my gut told me I wanted to do, and I'm happier for it. My gut instinct was to get the refurb. I did and I couldnt want anything more and couldnt be happier.

I hope this helps someone in deciding what to do.
     
ballzdeep
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Nov 25, 2006, 05:08 PM
 
good to hear it worked out in the end!

I am looking to get a MBP
life is too short to own a crappy computer
     
Kamikaze
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Nov 25, 2006, 09:01 PM
 
Sweet, They did right by me when my 20" iMac had numerous problems.

BTW, is the refurb a CD or C2D?

Thx
Free Your Mind

Macbook Pro CD, 2ghz, 1gb,100gb 7200, 128mb
Macbook (Black) CD, 2ghz, 1gb, 80gb, 64mb
12" iBook, 1.25ghz, 1.25gb, 60gb, 32mb
iMac (24" of Glory) C2D, 2.16ghz, 1gb, 250gb, 128mb
     
MCraider
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Nov 30, 2006, 01:31 PM
 
Great post..was an entertaining read for me

I have the same MBP, with 1GB ram, and am very happy with what I've got.
     
bishopazrael  (op)
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Dec 2, 2006, 10:59 AM
 
Mine's the Core Duo. I love it. 2 gigs for memory makes it scream.
     
Kamikaze
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Dec 2, 2006, 02:03 PM
 
Is there really a difference from 1gb to 2gb of ram?

I got lucky... When Apple replace my 20" iMac they gave me my 512mb stick of ram that I purchased after teh fact back to me, and what do you know that same ram works in my CD MBP.
So I have 1gb now.
Free Your Mind

Macbook Pro CD, 2ghz, 1gb,100gb 7200, 128mb
Macbook (Black) CD, 2ghz, 1gb, 80gb, 64mb
12" iBook, 1.25ghz, 1.25gb, 60gb, 32mb
iMac (24" of Glory) C2D, 2.16ghz, 1gb, 250gb, 128mb
     
bishopazrael  (op)
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Dec 3, 2006, 12:50 AM
 
512 is standard and it works. 1gb is good and things work. At 1.5gb y ou're at the max speed you'll get, and 2gb, just able to open more programs. I can tell the difference when I'm watching a movie from one hdd and ripping another to my mac hdd, and downloading ...

Yeah 2gb is the greatest.. just dont get it from apple. It'll be $600. Go to compusa and get the 1 gb stick for $100.
     
   
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