Amuso Posted January 18, 2008 Share Posted January 18, 2008 I've been lucky to been able to use a brand spanking new MacBook for about a day now. I received it unopened. It was double boxed, first in a grey non descript box with a small sticker that revealed this was an MB061 MacBook with a weight of 4.04kg. Inside the double boxing was the Apple designed box with a carrying handle on top. Very nice designed. Opening up the Apple box reveals a very tasteful boxing of the machine, powersupply, extra power cord, remote and a small box with a manual, 2 DVDs and a cleaning cloth. The machine was very well protected inside a bag and the keyboard and display was protected from eachother with a thin piece. Careful attention to design and detail the whole way. Impressive. I feel special to open this MacBook. The machine feels rather heavy though. Even if it supposed to weight just 2.27kg it feels heavier for some reason. But it feels sturdy and solid. It feels like quality. The power supply gets some attention. The magsafe plug is awesome. Brilliant idea. Can be inserted either way and works. And the slide on power socket, or slide on power cord are both nice touches. Thin, flexible smooth wire. Very light power supply unless some others I've experienced over the years. So it won't add a lot of weight to the machine when carried around. The manuals "Everything about your Mac" and "Everything else" is all in Apple quality and sense of humor. I love that. They make you smile in the way the present their products. Powering on the MacBook, it boots right up into configuring Leopard. It came with 10.5.0 standard, and getting started just takes 2-3 minutes. I run XBench to compare it to my other systems, and to see if performance increases, decreases and by how much when 10.5.1 updates are installed. iLife 08 is also present. It immedieatly finds my WiFi network and asks to connect to it. I allow it and download all updates available for the machine and run XBench again. I slightly miss a right button touchpad/mouse, but nothing I feel I can't overcome by holding down Control while clicking. Anyways, there's USB and USB mice... No problem in my eyes. The touchpad feels very nice. Spacious and not too big. No tapping effect to accidentaly click or doubleclick, move or anything with the icons. I never liked the default tapping on PC laptops, so this suits me just great. I am sure it can be activated in the preferences for those who prefer it though. And especially new users who haven't used a computer will not get confused by "what happend now?" if tapping was default on. The keyboard doesn't seem to always get all the keys I press down. Maybe I press to lightly, or slightly miss because of so many years behind PC keyboards, but it has annoyed me a couple of times already. I did make a note that I didn't like the Fn (Function) button to be the leftmost key, and would have preferred Control to be. But a minute later I realize this isn't a problem on a Mac... I never use Control! I use the option key (Option-Q to quit etc). So then I figure that maybe Fn isn't in a bad place at all... The fan seems to come on often, and often revs up quite fast and then becomes noisy. A bit disappointing, especially if you prefer a more silent workplace. No biggie to me, but I make a note that some might find it annoying. It's not as hot as my previous MacBook G3 which was cooking hot underneat. It gets hot, but you won't burn I think. The slot-in/slide-in DVD-drive is noisy! And it makes some non-Appleish mechanical fuzz when powered on, or waking from sleep. They could have done something about this I feel, without going crazy about silencing it. At least some sound proofing would have helped a lot. Other than that it works fine and is rather quiet during operation. Made a couple of DVD images using Disk Utility. No problemo. Nice tough of having an eject button next to F12. Good thinking, Apple! But my biggest disappointment so far is... Well, typing on the machine isn't a nice experience at all. The keyboard is fine, but you rest your hands on the machine, and I tend to sit lower than the machine so that my wrists rest on the machine. And here's the problem! The edges on the case are just too sharp. I feel they are scratching me all the time, and that disappoints me a lot after they put so much effort into the design of the machine. Rounding of the edges should definately have been done. Not much needed, but obviously overseen in the Q&A process. It is actually so annoying that I am sure I would be sad to own the machine after a month. I would probably find a way to round the edges myself - and probably ruin the fine casing... So I feel very lucky to have been able to test-drive a brand new MacBook. I now think I would have preferred the iMac over the MacBook. Of course it's not portable, it is transportable though. And it has a bigger screen and more space... So it would be a nice compromise for an entry level Macintosh for me. I will let my girlfriend try out the MacBook over the weekend and see if she comes to the same conclusion... It will be posted here ...Still lovin' Apple!...and saving up for an iMac 20" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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