Positive MacBook Pro comments?

Widder said:

Hi!
(Win 3.1--HATED it, Win '95--usable, Win '98--better yet, Win XP--quite doable, and, briefly, Win Vista (which brings me here to this board).

Click to expand...

Hated Win 3.1? What alternatives to Windows were there in 1992? OS/2 1.3? Yeeks. Linux? I think Linux's market penetration at that time was "some college kids." It was also a pre-1.0 kernel, and basically unusable. DesqView/X? What? In 1992 Windows 3.1 was *the* GUI, and it's how MS got where they are. I personally used OS/2 from 1993-1996, but in those days doing desktop support in either homes or offices meant fixing Windows 3.1 machines. It was hard to 'hate' the best OS a soccer mom could use at home, then use at work.

Widder said:

Windows (with it's ".dll", "winini", msconfig, etc) and especially Vista have shown me that MS is on the wrong path.

Click to expand...

Vista is awkward, and maybe not the best step, but none of that other stuff makes any sense. How could msconfig be a problem? It's simply an information and tweaking application. OS X has "msconfig-like" things in it, ya know. Most OS's do.

Widder said:

The problem is all the horrible problems I've been hearing about the Macbook Pro: malfunctioning LED's, the keyboard dropping typed characters, and the ability to bring water to a boil with the temperatures put off by the laptop.

Click to expand...

Apple's computers are made all over the place, and not every single one that rolls off an assembly line can be perfect. A facility can turn out a bad batch once in a while. It happens. Apple's resolutions to these problems can sometimes be debatable (they do seem to be ignoring the key dropping thing) but every company has these quirks. For the record, Macbook Pros run warm, and it's partially due to them being made mostly out of metal. Metal conducts heat, so the whole thing acts like a heatsink. It's not like you will be cooking eggs on them, but they do get toasty. This is a price to pay for the fact that they aren't loaded down with big heavy heatsinks inside. The size of the MBP vs. it's performance is very impressive.

I have experienced my own MBP quirks. I do see the key dropping thing from time to time, and I'm having some issues with sound scheme stuff causing the system to hiccup (like it chews up all the CPU to play a system sound). I am learning to adjust to these quirks and while I do hope they are fixed eventually, I have a feeling I'll be on my next MBP before they get resolved in these older (previous gen) ones. ; ;

Thanks for all the great replies to my post!
I will definitely make the change as soon as I can!

S.SubZero said:

Hated Win 3.1? What alternatives to Windows were there in 1992? OS/2 1.3? Yeeks. Linux? I think Linux's market penetration at that time was "some college kids."

Click to expand...

Talk about narrow minded - in 1992, it wasn't even necessary to use a PC.

AmigaOS
RISC OS
GEM
DOS (yes people actually used it)

Incidentally, Win 3.1 was just DOS in protect mode running a shell, it was hardly 'the' GUI of the time. It was vastly inferior to just about every other GUI out there, even OS/2 (which MS built anyway, in the UK).

They all have issues. Equally. They cant yet make hardware or os that will work in real harmony. But we live in hope.

I disagree with the person saying only someone who shouldn't be touching a computer is going to have crashing issues with windows. Windows is a pain in the butt operating system. I've used windows for like 12 years or so and I despised everything there was about mac. I just recently gave it a chance and I love it. Mac functions so much smoother than windows. And windows DOES CRASH even if you know what you are doing.

As for the macbook pro, I'll tell you some more stuff about it since I've extensively researched while I was in the market to buy mine, that I now have. There are about a million in one problems that the MBP used to have when it first came out. Since that time mac "silently" it said fixed many of them. Some of the most common problems I've ready about are heat (which is true the thing gets hot, there is no denying it) I've also read though that the heat frequently has to do with temp goop not being applied right (can't think of the technical word for the goop atm if it comes to me I'll edit this) So if your MBP gets tooooo hot I think it would be a kinda easy fix.

The other thing is swelling batteries... I've not heard anything about those recently so I'm assuming it was fixed when apple was working on it.

Screen issues of all shapes forms and sizes. That is another one that I can attest too. Although it's hugely blown out of proportion and I can't see any reason unless you were looking for problems that you'd even notice, and it doesn't effect the use of the MBP at all. At least not for me. I've read that some peoples bent screens cause their display to be darker in the center then the outsides. I've not experienced that... I assume it's just people complaining. The TRUTH of that matter is from what I've experienced is that when you close the MBP lid the center is firmly attached to the bottom but the furthest out left and right sides don't quite hug it air tight. It's very unnoticeable... and I really disagree that it even be called a flaw.

Everything else that I've heard of I think were VERY isolated incidents like anything else. Like another person mentioned you only hear about the bad ... people don't rant about good things. Any of the other issues you've read I'd say where just weird unusual very isolated cases.

The only thing I'd truly say for the vast majority is true is that these notebooks get hot. Although I feel like the company obviously knew that heat is important and I feel like they at least knew their limits where heat was concerned. IF it overheats it will shut down... I've never had that happen, and I've never experienced any hardware issues due to the heat, and I don't think I ever will. I think the laptop runs hotter then other laptops but not in a category that is dangerous to the computer or the user.

As for wifi dropping, I've never had an issue with that. Mine stays connected flawlessly.

Zoolook said:

Talk about narrow minded - in 1992, it wasn't even necessary to use a PC.

Click to expand...

Those OS's either did not run on PCs in 1992, or as in GEM's case, were already marginal in 1992. That's why I didn't mention System 7, since that also didn't run on a PC.

Also, Microsoft's market gain in 1990-1993 would indicate to me that Windows 3.x was insanely successful.

I'm a MBP devotee and I have to be honest: I have had a keyboard and cookie problem. Literally... I got some cookie crumbs stuck under my space key and it darn near drove me bloody crazy. That was my fault... it has since been taken care of... my MBP is back to normal.

S.SubZero said:

Those OS's either did not run on PCs in 1992, or as in GEM's case, were already marginal in 1992. That's why I didn't mention System 7, since that also didn't run on a PC.

Also, Microsoft's market gain in 1990-1993 would indicate to me that Windows 3.x was insanely successful.

Click to expand...

I think his point was that the PC as a platform wasn't as dominant as it is today. There were many viable alternatives. Whereas today, if you're not running Windows, Mac OS or Linux, your capability is severely inhibited.

im tired of people saying how expensive mac's are. the only thing that throws them over the top is if you buy loads of memory from apple.

most of the time the price of the computers are comparable to ones of that size and speed.

my roomate and I just bought two laptops his vista mine the macbook. he spent a few hundred less but he also has the standard 15" size and a much slower core 2 duo.

from what I have seen, get the lowest you can in the mac and than once you have it buy it from new egg or w/e. its the same thing and in the end your not spening much more.

also in terms of windows crashing, it is EXTREMELY daft to sit and say only idiots that cant use windows fail at it. dont get me wrong I use windows at work AND at home. I am a CS major in college so i think i know a few things about computers, maybe. When I turn my PC off alot of the time I get the "whatever is still running would you like to exit......" window. Also in terms of programs crashing and exiting/freezing. I use the cs3 programs ALOT and I like having them each open at the same time. In windows this was sometimes a pain in the butt, and my desktop is not a POS, but sometimes when working with larger files id have to hold my breath. I can honestly say I have not had the problem with my mac as of yet.

My roomate is a huge windows fanboy, We have a crash count on my apple from when I got it and its still at 0. playing around i have done some phenomenally stupid things to my mac but the little guy still holds strong.

Also if any of you guys have installed windows on your mac, with a windows disc not a restore disk, know its someitmes a pain to get all those drivers for your computer. time consuming.... w.e with bootcamp on my mac, i paid no attention to what i was doing and the driver install was just a a breeze with the mac cd, it was amazing. and it really works great. I guess you could argue that that in itself is a restore disk, and maybe it is, but even so it doesnt toss all those annoying extras in.

in my opinion, mac has pulled ahead quite a bit for me.

imnothardcore said:

im tired of people saying how expensive mac's are. the only thing that throws them over the top is if you buy loads of memory from apple.

Click to expand...

This is partially true. I have a Dell XPS2 laptop, and it cost me slightly more two years ago than my MBP cost me last September. The XPS2 came with 1GB of memory; I later dropped $125 and upped it to 2GB when I really felt I needed it.

My MBP came with 2GB of RAM because I did not want to pay the $500 Apple Memory Tax. I later upgraded it to 4MB for one-quarter of that, $125, and that included my I-am-an-impatient-git tax.

The MPB also has 2.5 times the hard drive space (250GB vs. the 100GB in the XPS2), which also increases the price considerably. (I knew I'd have to make a tradeoff, so I did, and I think it was for the best in the long run.)

But that's part of computer buying: you increase thing x and can't afford thing y, or vice versa.

Back to the original: I love my MBP, as it's far lighter than the XPS2 with  near every capability (I still can't work out how to join separated .zip files, but I'm sure that's just me not knowing yet), and when I'm travelling, it's much more obvious, since it's a 6-ounce powerbrick vs. the 2 pounds of the XPS2 brick.

What is it with people spinning what I said? I never said that it only crashes on the computer illiterate anywhere.

S.SubZero said:

Also, Microsoft's market gain in 1990-1993 would indicate to me that Windows 3.x was insanely successful.

Click to expand...

I wasn't talking about its relative success, or even about PC centric GUIs, I was referring to all available GUI based machines. GEM was hardly dead in 1992, especially if you were a musician, but I guess we're talking about relative success, so I take you point.

Compared to OS/2 and perhaps even compared to niche computers like the Acorn Archimedes or Atari ST, then yes Windows 3 was pretty succesful. But in terms of its penetration into the business world or its actual success in the home, it did a pretty bad job of replacing DOS. It was certainly the catalyst for Microsoft choosing to take NT away from OS/2. However back to your original point about Win 3.1 being pretty much the only choice in 1992, this is not the case at all if you look beyond the x086 world.

imnothardcore said:

Also if any of you guys have installed windows on your mac, with a windows disc not a restore disk, know its someitmes a pain to get all those drivers for your computer. time consuming.... w.e with bootcamp on my mac, i paid no attention to what i was doing and the driver install was just a a breeze with the mac cd, it was amazing. and it really works great. I guess you could argue that that in itself is a restore disk, and maybe it is, but even so it doesnt toss all those annoying extras in.

in my opinion, mac has pulled ahead quite a bit for me.

Click to expand...

When you build a computer the mobo comes with a cd that has all the drivers on it, and if you have Vista, it will actually find the drivers for you.

imnothardcore said:

Also if any of you guys have installed windows on your mac, with a windows disc not a restore disk, know its someitmes a pain to get all those drivers for your computer. time consuming.... w.e with bootcamp on my mac, i paid no attention to what i was doing and the driver install was just a a breeze with the mac cd, it was amazing. and it really works great. I guess you could argue that that in itself is a restore disk, and maybe it is, but even so it doesnt toss all those annoying extras in.

Click to expand...

If you install Windows on a Mac in any way, it's a breeze. Both Parallels and VM Fusion also contain all the drivers needed to get going, so I am not sure who you think it will be a pain for, since Parallels, VM Fusion and BootCamp are the 3 major methods.