So it’s been 2 weeks since I’ve had the my new MacBook, so I thought share some of my thoughts about the new MacBook in addition to my preliminary thoughts.
One of the things I’ve noticed about the new MacBook is that the feet on bottom aren’t as grippy as the old one. Perhaps it’s just a matter using up the less rubbery surface layer of the feet before it starts to grip the desk. While I’m on the topic of feet my cool feet don’t seem to be able to grip the bottom of the MacBook. Since the bottom of the MacBook is solid aluminium and the cool feet work on by suction, I can’t see why the feet won’t stick. They grip very nicely onto the polycarbonate MacBook bottom, maybe it’s something about the aluminum that’s causing it, but I’m not sure what it is.
The ambient light sensor which is located on the right side of the iSight (where the mic is on polycarbonate MacBooks), is kind of annoying at times, but can be useful. On the 2.0GHz MacBook it acts to change the screen brightness according to the ambient light. It’s useful in the sense that when you turn of the lights in the room and your screen was at full brightness, your eyes won’t be blinded by the bright screen because the computer adjusts the brightness to a lower level!! However, it’s annoying in the fact that when you’re on battery and you lower your screen brightness to converse battery time, then your close your MacBook and move to another location, when you open the laptop again, it can increase the brightness without you noticing and thus you lose some battery time, but otherwise it works great!
So I installed Windows Vista Business 64-bit on Friday night, thanks goes to Heston for burning the disc. The Vista install went okay, was pretty quick. The only actual hiccup actually came from Apple’s drivers! Apparently Apple doesn’t want the owners of comsumer portable line (non-Pro MacBooks) up to any 64-bit OS other than their own, so when I went to install the drivers I was greeted with a error message indicating that 64-bit bootcamp couldn’t be installed on my system! Yet, when one actually goes to browse through the files on the drivers DVD (same disc that the OS X 10.5.5 install is on), you’ll notice that the 64-bit bootcamp control panel is indeed on the disc and that all the drivers are there. A quick search on google reveals a few methods on how to install the drivers on the 64-bit Vista install. Although I don’t agree with Apple’s decision on not letting owners of their comsumer laptops install 64-bit Windows, I can see where they’re coming from. I understand that this is their way of separating users, and many users of non-Pro MacBooks probably don’t know the difference between 32 and 64-bit so it doesn’t matter to them. At the end of the day, it just doesn’t make sense, why bother putting 64-bit drivers on the disc if you don’t want use to have access to them, and why disable the install when the drivers are already on the damned disc?!?!?
Perhaps the most ironic thing about this MacBook is the fact that the max resolution for the VGA output is 1600 x 1000… The irony comes in the fact that my previous MacBook supported a higher resolution than that, and it had a much crappier graphics (if it could even be called that). A quick look in the Nvidia website shows that the maximum resolution supported via VGA by the GeForce 9400M is much higher than that, yet another stunt that Apple’s pulling that I nor understand, nor agree with. Anyways, so when you do use the $34 adapter you get to connect your widescreen monitor to the MacBook, what happens is that it’ll work, but at the MacBook’s leisure, it’ll cause the external monitor that has a native resolution that’s higher than 1600 x 1000 to flicker black for 2 seconds then things will go back to normal, there’s no predicting when it’ll happen. The only solution is to choose a lower resolution, but that just makes the screen irritable to work on… So I just deal with the flickering… not the best solution, but the alternative sucks mush more…
For the most part, this MacBook is cooler than my previous MacBook. On average, sensors show a 7°C difference in temperature! Not to mention that the bottom of the system feel cooler and the heat is more spread out, the aluminum casing is acting as a pretty good heat sink. However, the aluminum is case acting as a heat sink incidentally makes the top (keyboard) of the MacBook warmer than the previous one, but otherwise everything is cooler; and of course, the system is only warm when running slightly more processor intensive programs, otherwise its generally room temp.
Anyways, that’s all for now, perhaps I’ll be back for more later..
