F
foxblu
Guest
I recently purchased a macbook for 1099 (1.83 core duo) and my experiences I will share for any of those thinking of switching from PC to a mac. First I will say that I was looking for something sleek and simplistic in design. One of the first things I noticed on the new machine was the sharp edge where your palm rests when using the touchpad. What a horrible design flaw. Then after about 30 mins on the machine I notice it got extremely hot. Too hot to use as a "laptop" unless you're wearing asbestos pants. I then run across countless profesional reviews and forums noting these problems and a string of others including hardware reliablility. After only 2 days I noticed problems with the maching locking up and becoming unresponsive. I recall my college professors (a few years ago) having issues with their mac's locking up and having to hard reboot and go through a lengthy process (sometimes multiple reboots) to get back to a functional machine. I found OS X just as awkward to use as OS 9 that I was familiar with in college. It has improved but I think I was hoping for more. The two finger scrolling and right clicking is a bad choice IMO b/c at times the right click menu pops up when you want to scroll. Overall my experience left me realizing that this was a terribly designed piece of hardware with an even worse OS (although I bought it to run boot camp and windows as the primary OS so that wasn't as big of a problem). I have found apple and pro-mac forums to be extremely misleading. One example: an article written by a reviewer in response to the comment that a dell pc was less than a comparable mac. This is in fact true (I could have gotten the same machine through dell with a NEW core 2 chip vs. the yonah for the same price). He claimed his article was in response to a statement that PC's were cheaper and stated that that was not the case. He the proceded to compare a Macbook pro to a very different (and much nicer) Dell inspiron. Lets compare apples to apples. I will say I quickly packed the macbook up and returned it, less the 10% restocking fee (high yes, but I didn't hesitate to pay up to get rid of that machine). When I was in the apple store, I noticed a table full of returned computers which I found interesting. I'll be going with a Dell next time I upgrade and running Vista. I've been running Vista and so far it has been outstanding. Robust and very efficient. I have no idea how or why apple is still around as a computer/os company expect for the few mac fans. In addition, my experience with the apple store was less than stellar. I found the sales folks to be rude and unknowledgeable. There's a reason why mac users make up less than 10% of the computer using pop. Switch? Not me. Dell Inspiron with Vista for me folks!!