Shiny new Mac!
I got my new MacBook Pro in the mail today! This was a total shock, since I was only supposed to get the free iPod Touch in the mail today. When I checked last night, the laptop was still on a flight from Shanghai, having been delayed since 1) FedEx took over a day (local time) to pick it up after Apple gave them the shipping info and 2) FedEx had a shipping exception, meaning the package arrived after the plane left. So an initially projected arrival date of Friday got shifted to Monday and I was started to get irritated that I had bothered paying the extra $15 for expedited shipping. But then overnight, the package arrived in Anchorage, flew off to Memphis, cleared customs, flew to Newark and then got shipped to the local delivery center in time for the morning rounds. So even though the iPod Touch was in FedEx's hands two days earlier, they both arrived at my door at the same time, just before 11am. Very impressive, FedEx!
Well, this afternoon has been playing with the laptop. I've been following once_a_banana's advice for calibrating the battery gauge. It's actually not in the instruction manual's curt description of battery care, nor does it come up in a search of apple's Mac site for "battery". All you get are promo pages talking about their awesome new battery in fairly nonspecific terms. Anyway, I'm glad he found it for me on the support pages. Link.
The other thing I've been doing is transfering files over from my external hard drive, so I can reformat it from NTFS (which is Mac-readable, but not Mac-writeable) to some Mac-friendly file formatting. I've already filled up my new laptop practically to capacity, and now there's about another 40GB to go onto my parents' computer. This is all temporary, because once I reformat that drive, all these files are going back onto the external.
So far I have only two complaints:
1. Nowhere in the hardware specs as you're buying the MacBook Pro do they tell you how much the damn thing weighs. I had forgotten about that consideration and was only reminded of it when I saw FedEx's shipping info. The damn thing weighs over 8lbs! That's even more than my 6.5lb Toshiba, which had been giving me neck aches from carrying my laptop bag for extended periods of time. I probably still would have gotten this laptop, but it would have been something I would have wanted to know.
2. There are two USB ports, but they only put a 1/8" space between them. That is really not enough since all USB products stick out at least a little beyond the metal part that inserts and many of them stick out a good amount. My external HD sticks out only and extra 1/16", but my mouse is almost 1/8" and my memory stick is even more. So if I use the memory stick, I can't use anything else, and I can just barely get the mouse and external in at the same time, but they push each other outwards and when I pulled out the mouse it tugged the external just enough to cause an improper device removal message.
Good points so far: fan is utterly quiet, quick reboots after updating the software, fast USB transfer.
Well, this afternoon has been playing with the laptop. I've been following once_a_banana's advice for calibrating the battery gauge. It's actually not in the instruction manual's curt description of battery care, nor does it come up in a search of apple's Mac site for "battery". All you get are promo pages talking about their awesome new battery in fairly nonspecific terms. Anyway, I'm glad he found it for me on the support pages. Link.
The other thing I've been doing is transfering files over from my external hard drive, so I can reformat it from NTFS (which is Mac-readable, but not Mac-writeable) to some Mac-friendly file formatting. I've already filled up my new laptop practically to capacity, and now there's about another 40GB to go onto my parents' computer. This is all temporary, because once I reformat that drive, all these files are going back onto the external.
So far I have only two complaints:
1. Nowhere in the hardware specs as you're buying the MacBook Pro do they tell you how much the damn thing weighs. I had forgotten about that consideration and was only reminded of it when I saw FedEx's shipping info. The damn thing weighs over 8lbs! That's even more than my 6.5lb Toshiba, which had been giving me neck aches from carrying my laptop bag for extended periods of time. I probably still would have gotten this laptop, but it would have been something I would have wanted to know.
2. There are two USB ports, but they only put a 1/8" space between them. That is really not enough since all USB products stick out at least a little beyond the metal part that inserts and many of them stick out a good amount. My external HD sticks out only and extra 1/16", but my mouse is almost 1/8" and my memory stick is even more. So if I use the memory stick, I can't use anything else, and I can just barely get the mouse and external in at the same time, but they push each other outwards and when I pulled out the mouse it tugged the external just enough to cause an improper device removal message.
Good points so far: fan is utterly quiet, quick reboots after updating the software, fast USB transfer.