MacBook: one week's impressions
A week ago, I received my first Mac: a new 13.3" MacBook, set to replace my 15.4" Dell Pentium-M 1.6GHz boat anchor. Below are my likely to be un-original impressions, hardware-wise:
The Bad:
The display. The glossiness is just fine, but the vertical viewing angle is the pits. The screen has to be absolutely perpendicular with my line of sight to it, or it gets washed out or too dark. I compared my MacBook with another in a store and the screens behaved identically.
The heat. The Core Duo has a TDP not much higher than the Pentium M I had previously. The laptop is unreasonably hot at most times. Apparently many MacBooks were manufactured with far too much thermal compound, as were the MacBook Pros. I haven't decided whether I should open mine up to remedy the issue. Currently the fan only turns on for a long period of time when the CPU is pegged, which I do appreciate noise-wise, but this comes at the expense of a hot-running computer.
The "moo." At a certain temperature the fan kicks in and immediately turns off. This makes a mooing noise. It's very annoying. Should be fixable.
Sharp edges. The hard edges around the perimeter of the case when opened are sexy design-wise, but they dig into my wrists when typing in certain positions.
Lack of keys. Several important keys are left off, like delete, home, end, page up, and page down. This seems traditional with portable Macs, so I can't complain too much.
The Good:
Sturdiness. It does not creak like my old Dell. The screen portion does creak a bit when opened, but it seems acceptable.
Fit and finish. It is put together very well. Time will tell whether it holds up, as several Apple notebooks have had physical design flaws that appeared later.
My software impressions are mostly positive, with a few exceptions. There are a few braindead defaults, such as the tab key switching only between text fields, instead of all form controls. Home and end act strangely. Dragging a folder into a location with another of the same name replaces rather than merges, permanently erasing the contents of the old folder. In any case, I can take or leave MacOS, just as I can take or leave Windows or Linux.
In conclusion, if it weren't for the heat, I'd be quite happy. The thermal compound seems to be a gross oversight on the part of Apple. I may get a ThinkPad some day when they have the specs and form factor I'm looking for.
The Bad:
The Good:
My software impressions are mostly positive, with a few exceptions. There are a few braindead defaults, such as the tab key switching only between text fields, instead of all form controls. Home and end act strangely. Dragging a folder into a location with another of the same name replaces rather than merges, permanently erasing the contents of the old folder. In any case, I can take or leave MacOS, just as I can take or leave Windows or Linux.
In conclusion, if it weren't for the heat, I'd be quite happy. The thermal compound seems to be a gross oversight on the part of Apple. I may get a ThinkPad some day when they have the specs and form factor I'm looking for.