Too Expensive But a Solid Machine

I’ve been a PC user all my life, but with my old HP on its last legs and law school around the corner, I decided to get a MacBook, mostly on a whim. (Note: if you’re going to law school, make sure yours is a Mac-friendly school before buying one, since most exams are taken via laptop). I went for the “BlackBook”, which is probably the worst deal out of the three at $1500 ($1400 with the student discount). Anyway, here are the specs:

2.4 ghz Intel Core 2 Duo
2 GB of RAM
250 GB HD
8x Superdrive (DVD-RW/CD-RW)
13.3” display
Integrated graphics card

The only difference between the Blackbook and the $1300 Macbook (which is white) is that the $1300 has a 160 GB hard drive. Worth $200? Whoops…

So yeah…don’t get a Blackbook. Well, I have to live with my own stupidity, so here’s my take on my new laptop. Have I joined the Cult of Jobs?! Read and find out (in case you couldn’t tell by my rating of this product)!


Size/Appearance
13.3” is a great size. At only 5 lbs, the MacBook won’t break your back, and it also has decent battery life (~4 hrs, but expect it to drop over time, just like any other laptop battery). But it’s still big enough for games, movies, and the like. Great size for a student; it wasn’t much fun lugging my old 15.4” HP around to classes and to the library. And if you’re a law student, you will be bringing your laptop to every lecture for the next 3 years, and so you want something small.

The screen is glossy and has an insanely small viewing angle. If you start to slouch a bit while using the computer, you will have to adjust the screen just to be able to see clearly! Still, not a big annoyance really as long as you don’t keep slouching and unslouching. There’s not too much glare or anything.

The keyboard is a little different than most. Here’s a pic (http://images.macworld.com/images/legacy/2006/05/images/content/macbook-keys.jpg). It annoys some people, but I rather like it and it looks sharp. The only problem is that I can’t just take a Clorox wipe to clean my keyboard because the liquid would probably soak into the computer that way, at least more so than if you did that to a regular laptop. Actually, I’m rather scared of cleaning my keyboard at all now (what I did last time was wring the Clorox wipe out as much as I could before gently wiping it on my keyboard with my Macbook unplugged). Any suggestions?
Overall the computer is pretty cool looking! Why do you think I got it?


Leopard
I don’t really get the big fuss about Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5). For me, it’s not any worse or better than Windows XP (I never used Vista), just different. Some of the claims that Mac fanboys make are kind of dumb. Sure, there are no real viruses or spyware for Macs, but that’s just because it doesn’t make much sense for virus-writers to write code to attack people with Macs (~5% of the computer using community as a whole). Also, in case the unthinkable does happen, you’re kind of effed because there are no free spyware/antivirus programs, as far as I know.

If you are computer-literate at all, you will be able to navigate both operating systems with relative ease, after relearning a few keyboard shortcuts. Leopard seems to be more stable than Windows XP, having frozen on me only once so far. Then again, my old HP didn’t exactly blue screen me all the time either. Leopard is definitely nicer looking, and I find it almost painful to go back to XP when I use Boot Camp (more on that later). Still, there are minor annoyances (not being able to really maximize windows, programs opening up when I click on them accidentally in the dock, etc.) And I still think the Start Menu is better than Leopard’s Dock, though again, the Dock is more pleasing to the eye.

Still, Windows is probably the superior platform because of all the software available to it. For example, there are 3 AIM clients that I am aware of for Macs (AIM, Apple’s iChat, and Adium) compared to three hundred gajillion for Windows. Office for Mac doesn’t come with OneNote, a popular notetaking program used by many law students. C’mon!


Gaming
Games are a nuisance to play on the Macbook as well. I know that without even a discrete video card, the Blackbook wouldn’t be able to kick Call of Duty 4’s butt or anything, but I wanted to be able to play games like The Sims 2, Civilization IV, and the like on it. But there are many things getting in the way.

First of all, not all games are available for Mac. Second, when they are available, they are more expensive. Sims 2 for the Mac is $50, while Sims 2 Double Deluxe (comes with two expansions, I believe) for the PC is $30. Civ IV for the Mac is $50, while it’s $30 for the PC or $40 with an expansion included. Third, the Mac ports suck. Aspyr is in charge of this for Sims 2 and they do a terrible job. The game freezes from time to time, and the game can’t fast forward very fast (meaning I have to sit there and watch my Sims sleep). It’s not my machine that’s holding the game back, since it runs find on the highest settings; I believe it’s the port. Aspyr also includes a patch on their website that is capped at a 5 kb/s download speed. Seriously, WTF? Sim City 4 can barely even run on my Mac, with all kinds of graphical glitches. Maybe it’s just my computer, you say? After Boot Camp (more on that later), Civ IV runs just fine on my Macbook if I use XP, with all the settings up. Hmmm…

You don’t have to be a hardcore PC gamer to be disappointed by this. I have an Xbox 360; I just wanted to be able to play a few games once in a while, the ones that don’t come out for consoles. Games run fine through Boot Camp (I hear Team Fortress 2 runs OK too), but it’s a hassle Boot Camping. Let’s talk about that at any rate.


Boot Camp
That’s right, since these have Intel processors, if you get a copy of Windows XP or Vista, you can set up your Macbook to run both of them (and at the same time if you shell out extra for Parallels or Fusion)! Sounds great, but it’s more of a hassle than you think.

First of all, getting a copy of Windows is pretty durn expensive if you’re not a student. I got a copy of XP for $20 through my undergrad, but only because I worked for the university and counted as “faculty”. Most schools offer Windows for free or for really cheap, but many only offer it to specific majors (my law school only offers it for cheap for art majors or something). Full retail is around $200 because you need to get the full version of XP or Vista, not an upgrade.

Setting it up is kind of annoying. You have to partition your hard drive; you are splitting it up so that part of it is used to boot up Windows and the other for Leopard. But you can only choose from preset partitions; you can set aside small portions, 32 GB, or half your hard drive. You can’t change this either, and with the larger partitions, you can’t access your Mac files from Windows (but you can access your Windows files from Leopard). Want to listen to your music while using Windows? You can’t. Bummer.

Besides these annoyances, Boot Camp works as advertised. It’s just…annoying. You’re not going to be seamlessly switching back and forth between the two because it’s annoying to have to wait for the machine to reboot. Its only real use is for playing games, since Mac games are so inferior.


Conclusion
Don’t get me wrong; the Blackbook is not a horrible machine. It’s just a bad deal ($200 more for 90GB more in hard drive space), and much more expensive than PC’s with similar specs ($200 more or so). I’m still pretty happy though because I managed to get a free iPod Touch out of it (and even though I technically bought my Blackbook too early to be able to participate in the promotion, spending 15 minutes on the phone with Apple got me a reprieve) and I was running out of space on my Nano. Also, Garage Band is a great piece of software. I’m no Noel Gallagher, but Garage Band helps me to record my own song ideas whenever I get an idea and it’s really easy to use. It’s certainly better than Acid Pro or similar programs for the PC (but definitely no Pro Tools). So yeah, I’m fairly happy with my Macbook.

I still do not recommend the Blackbook for anyone (get the white Macbook and an external HD with the extra money). As for Macbooks, they are good if you have a strong preference for using Leopard for some reason (don't use it to run Windows! That would be a complete waste of money). As someone that has no real strong preference or either operating system, my money would’ve been better spent buying a PC laptop. Also, the new Macbooks should be coming out in a few months, so if you can wait, wait til then to either get a new Macbook or get one of these older ones for cheap.