New MacBook Pro -- Slow??

Howdy!

First post here... treat me kindly

I got a new MacBook Pro on clearance recently -- about 2 weeks ago. It's the 15" 2.2 ghz, 2 gb RAM model. I was coming off of a 5 year old PC, so I was really hoping for some blazing speed.

So far, I've been a little disappointed. To give you an idea on how long it is taking, I'm just thinking of some examples:

To add album artwork to 10 songs in iTunes: ~15-20 seconds
To open iTunes: ~10-15 seconds
Opening GarageBand: ~90-120 seconds

Overall, it just feels like a sub-par machine. Was I expecting too much? What's a good way to measure this?

You were expecting to much. I know because so was I. Your best bet is to do what I did and return it and get a pc with twice the power for the same price. Obviously some people like the MBP but you can get much better from Dell. Unless you have a Mac Pro your really not up to speed.

Show me this twice as powerfull dell laptop which you think you have found?

Try downloading a program like Onyx and running the maintenance scripts that does seem like something might be a bit fishy.

You're expecting too much. I have a Mac Pro and it's not lightning quick. Don't get me wrong, it's a powerhouse but it still takes 10 seconds to add artwork to an album.

the last time i checked (right before buying my mac) any dell configured to match the macbook pro's config as close as possible wound up costing pretty much the same...thats one of the reasons i go this baby coz i would rather pay this much to get a mac than a pc...

juice...having OS updates hlps a lot...so if you dont already have all necessary updates ...get them...
onyx or any such maintenace tool is always good to have...run the scrips...repair permissions...you may see some improvements...

juice said:

Howdy!

First post here... treat me kindly

I got a new MacBook Pro on clearance recently -- about 2 weeks ago. It's the 15" 2.2 ghz, 2 gb RAM model. I was coming off of a 5 year old PC, so I was really hoping for some blazing speed.

So far, I've been a little disappointed. To give you an idea on how long it is taking, I'm just thinking of some examples:

To add album artwork to 10 songs in iTunes: ~15-20 seconds
To open iTunes: ~10-15 seconds
Opening GarageBand: ~90-120 seconds

Overall, it just feels like a sub-par machine. Was I expecting too much? What's a good way to measure this?

Click to expand...

Hang on a second here. My iTunes with a library size spanning 3 different drives with hundreds of GB of media sometimes takes quite a while to load. How much media are you dealing with here?

Adding artwork is really just running a script to edit each individual file, this can take a while depending on artwork size, etc.

Garage Band is loading many many samples upon starting, mine takes about this long to start.

I have a 2.5 mbp and it take my Garageband about 3-4 secs to open. I would call Apple Care and go make a Genius Bar Apt before sending the machine back.

One of the many reasons I didn't buy a Mac when I bought my laptop... I got a Dell for $1600 that is on par with a ~$2000 Macbook Pro...

INTELligent said:

One of the many reasons I didn't buy a Mac when I bought my laptop... I got a Dell for $1600 that is on par with a ~$2000 Macbook Pro...

Click to expand...

What does that have to do this thread? A similar spec Dell will run the same as an Apple.

I'm on the same machine (2.2, 2gig, MBP), and Garageband just opened in 6 seconds.

Something in wrong with yer laptop. Get to an Apple Store!

INTELligent said:

One of the many reasons I didn't buy a Mac when I bought my laptop... I got a Dell for $1600 that is on par with a ~$2000 Macbook Pro...

Click to expand...

To be a bit O/T:
Oh really? Which one? How much does it weight? How long do the batteries last? Cause benig Wintel user till recently I've spent 2 months trying to find pa Wintel machine that would match MBP (in performance AND screen size AND weight AND battery life) and I just couldnt (price was not one of the ciriteria) ...
So?

INTELligent said:

One of the many reasons I didn't buy a Mac when I bought my laptop... I got a Dell for $1600 that is on par with a ~$2000 Macbook Pro...

Click to expand...

But with the MBP, although it's a tad more costlier, you get ease-of-use, a more superior software and OS, and no more sleepless nights

First of all, sounds like your MBP probably has a 5400RPM hard drive. If your PC was a desktop, it probably had a 7200 RPM hard drive. Some of the programs will only open as fast as that hard drive will spin to access them.

Order a Dell Desktop and see what happens with Vista. My brother has the 13" (maybe 14") XPS laptop with Vista and it was a Joke. The thing was so buggy, he ended up putting Linux on the machine. I too have priced out both an MBP and Dell XPS laptop with similar specs and they were very similar in price, the Dell might have even been a little more expensive.

I have 2 laptops at work, a maxed out pre-recent refresh MBP and a Dell Latitude with similar specs. Well, the Dell can only utilize 3GB out of the 4GB of RAM I installed in it because XP will only recognize that much. In comparison, the MBP smokes the Dell. The Dell's Hard Drive is 5400 RPM vs. 7200RPM. and the processor is a little slower. Even simple things like browsing the internet is ridiculously faster off the same connection.

I hated Macs for ever, and always though PCs would get me by. After all the stuff I have been hearing about Vista, being tired of dealing with Windows, and my positive experience with the Mac at work, I ordered my own personally and made the switch. (It should be here tomorrow!)

In my opinion, Leopard makes EVERYTHING slow. When I had tiger on my mac, it was super quick.
I even did a fresh install, most things take twice as long. Especially loading apps and starting up.

I am knew to Macs, but couldn't it be because Tiger was at its most recent iteration and perfected, where as Leopard is still in the early stages getting the bugs worked out?

Thanks for all the responses! I thought I had notifications turned, so I haven't visited my thread, but apparently I didn't.

This is NOT an Apple-bashing thread at all... I am not trying to compare to a PC. Please no hijacking...

To answer the question about how much media -- I am currently at >10,000 songs and 57 gb on an external running through a USB 2.0. Should I transfer to my computer?

rohan said:

the last time i checked (right before buying my mac) any dell configured to match the macbook pro's config as close as possible wound up costing pretty much the same...thats one of the reasons i go this baby coz i would rather pay this much to get a mac than a pc...

juice...having OS updates hlps a lot...so if you dont already have all necessary updates ...get them...
onyx or any such maintenace tool is always good to have...run the scrips...repair permissions...you may see some improvements...

Click to expand...

How can I make sure I have all the updates? I was under the impression they did them automatically.

juice said:

How can I make sure I have all the updates? I was under the impression they did them automatically.

Click to expand...

Click the Apple menu in the upper-left corner and then click on Software Update. That should take care of it.