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Intel MacBook Pro A Grave Disappointment
Date of Review: Mar 15, 2007
The Bottom Line: The MacBook Pro 17 inch with Intel chip has none of the promised power, and almost all the terrible problems computer users dread. For the money, it's a terrible computer.
I've been struggling with Mac laptops for the last few years. They've been slow. They've been glitchy. They've crashed and malfunctioned and left me high and dry when I needed them most.
Still, I don't want a computer that uses Windows. Windows doesn't maintain user privacy, and it doesn't protect its computers against viruses well enough. I'm not in the mood to spend my time fiddling with an alternative, DIY operating system like UNIX either.
So, when my iBook stopped working for the fifth time in under three years, I made the decision to buy a new Mac laptop, but this time, to buy the top of the line model. Some co-workers have suggested to me that my problems with my computers may stem from the fact that I've chosen the less expensive iBook models in the past.
I bought a 17-inch MacBook Pro, and I put on all the extra memory that was recommended. Every option that could optimize the performance of the computer, I chose, and I ended up spending several thousand dollars in the process.
I was confident that, this time, everything would work just great. Now, after a couple of months of owning this computer, I feel like a sucker.
Also, this MacBook Pro is not a really a laptop at all. Oh, it's nice and thin and light, but it gets burning hot after a couple hours of use - too hot to even think about holding on your lap.
Worse than what happens underneath the computer is what happens on the screen. First of all, the MacBook Pro is no faster in the work that I use it for than the iBook I got three years ago. Too many times, when I open up an application, I've got to wait two or three minutes before I can start to use it. Then, if I leave the application for awhile, it can take a good thirty seconds just for me to get to its open windows - as if the computer has put those applications to rest for awhile to save its resources.
The Safari application that comes with the computer is increasingly not compatible with many web sites, and when I am surfing the web I often get the rainbow-colored spinning wheel, telling me that I have to wait three, four, five, ten minutes before the application will respond again.
I shouldn't just pick on Safari, however. The truth is that many other applications, from Photoshop to Microsoft Office to Mail to Firefox will also often get stuck for minutes at a time.
What happened to the high speeds we were promised when Apple switched over to Intel chips? I have an expensive computer, but my MacBook Pro certainly isn't high speed.
Getting stuck isn't the worst of it. The crashes come quite often. Remember, years ago, when Apple introduced the first OS X, and promised that it would be crash free? Well, it wasn't then, and it isn't now. My Internet browser has crashed two times just while I've been trying to write this review on Epinions. Often, the entire computer has unexpectedly shut down in response to these crashes.
The Intel chip switch Apple made has also made the new MacBook Pro less useful in using old software. I have a good deal of software that was made to work on Classic Mac OS - and it still does its work well. It turns out that I cannot use that software any more. The Apple web site gives me the following explanation.
"You cannot use Mac OS 9 applications on Intel-based Macintosh computers because the Classic environment is not supported."
Apple suggests that I go out and buy new versions of the software. In some cases, those new versions don't exist. Even if I could go out and buy new versions of all the Classic OS software I have, just to use them with the MacBook Pro, it would cost me something like two thousand dollars.
Finally, the battery life on the MacBook Pro, even after just a couple of months, is withering. I get two or three hours of work from it, maximum.
I recognize that there are other computers with problems out there. Certainly, the MacBook Pro is not the worst computer I could imagine. However, when I pay approximately three thousand dollars for a computer, I expect something more from a computer than I got with the MacBook Pro.
I've been using Apple computers for over twenty years. The MacBook Pro, however, has me questioning whether I should ever buy a computer from Apple again.
