Disappointed switcher **solved - Happy switcher now**

My 2010 MBP 15" (Core i7 version, so the £1799) works fine with all video playback and game play (I play TF2 at near max settings)

True the fan jumps up to 5K+, but I have installed FanControl and lowered the boundaries so at 40C the fan ramps up to 4k rather than waiting to 55+. This in effect keeps my laptop under 60-70C (TF2 will bring it up to a max of 68c)

It has been found that Apple are not applying the thermal paste to their chips well, in terdowns their was way too much - you may have been affected by that. As for the crashing, OSX is not rock solid - your simply applying too much load to your little laptop. OSX under load begins to falter, if your used to a fast computer like me, being impatient is the only thing OSX cant cope with.

As for price, you cant complain, its a MacBook - you, me and every other owner all paid for the Apple symbol, not the hardware it comes with. :P
 
CurtGuven said:
OSX under load begins to falter, if your used to a fast computer like me, being impatient is the only thing OSX cant cope with.
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No operating system is perfect but my experience I can push my iMac at home a lot harder than I can push my better spec'd workstation at work before the OS starts to show signs it isn't happy.

As for price, you cant complain, its a MacBook - you, me and every other owner all paid for the Apple symbol, not the hardware it comes with. :p
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Problems with some builds aside you are also paying for the build quality.
 
CurtGuven said:
As for price, you cant complain, its a MacBook - you, me and every other owner all paid for the Apple symbol, not the hardware it comes with. :P
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Very true mate. A laptop costing half as much running Windows 7 will outperform a Macbook. With Apple, you're mainly paying for the name and image.

All show, no GO!!
 
CurtGuven said:
OSX under load begins to falter, if your used to a fast computer like me, being impatient is the only thing OSX cant cope with.
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So are you suggesting that my 2.4Ghz i5 15" MBP can't cope with running VMWare Fusion (Win 7 x64), Photoshop, Xcode, Indesign, Safari, Mail, iChat, MSN and iTunes all at the same time?

Rubbish.

Ironically a £1k Dell a friend purchased at the same time as my £1350 [Paid £1100 for it used - bargin] MBP and my MBP outperforms it by quite a margin, so not entirely sure where this half price outperforms one comes from.

Anyway, back to the topic.
 
purplesky said:
Very true mate. A laptop costing half as much running Windows 7 will outperform a Macbook. With Apple, you're mainly paying for the name and image.

All show, no GO!!
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Yeah. Right.

I'm the first person to look for the best bang for buck, hack things, run three OSs at once etc - I'm no Apple fanboy. But you're blatantly trolling. And wrong.
 
I have a late 2009 2.4Ghz C2D with 4Gb ram and I found it stuttered playing back full 1080p video using VLC. The solution was to use Plex as I believe it utilises both cores where as VLC can only use one. Give that a try.
 
DezUk said:
I have a late 2009 2.4Ghz C2D with 4Gb ram and I found it stuttered playing back full 1080p video using VLC. The solution was to use Plex as I believe it utilises both cores where as VLC can only use one. Give that a try.
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Thanks for the suggestion mate, but that's definitely not the issue. Most times VLC plays better than QuickTime or iTunes - and CPU usage is only about 5% so it's not a CPU usage issue. That wouldn't cause the other problems either, so I reckon the other guys were right about hardware faults (RAM maybe?). We'll see at 2pm. :)
 
Update:

The genius bar spent about five minutes on the machine, looking rather puzzled. The guy said it was 'fubared to say the least', and offered me a brand new replacement. :D When I asked what he thought was wrong, he said "Well, the graphics for sure... and the hard drive is wrecked... and the memory seems dodgy... and... well, here's your new machine Sir, we apologise for this isolated incident". :p

They gave me a brand new warranty with the new MBP, and said I have two more weeks to decide if Mac is for me (I told them I was a new switcher and it hadn't given me a good impression). They'll provide a no quibble refund to the full retail value of the machine (even knowing I bought it at student pricing) if I don't get on with this new one, plus a new full year of AppleCare. Not bad! Try getting that kind of service at [insert generic big PC retail store here]. :)

Even the keyboard feels better (more 'new'/rigid feeling) than the last one. I had nothing to compare it to since it was my first Mac but this one is definitely sturdier feeling!

I'll let you know how the machine bears up once I've got my backups restored and I can try out some multi-tasking and movies. Thanks again so much for all the advice and tips.
 
Thanks. :) Well so far, I don't want to tempt fate but this machine is 10x better than the last one. The backlight wasn't on until just a second ago when the room light went off, whereas the last machine refused to turn it off no matter how light it was. Also, despite installing iWork and running a full virus scan (yeah I know, but it pushes load so...), the CPU is around 35-40% used and the temps aren't even hitting 56oC, with the fans on minimum with no noise. On my last MBP, you only had to fire up one app and it was hitting 90oC and the fans were roaring. This one idles around 35 to 40oC (compared to 45 to 50 on the last one).

Win. :)

Now just to make sure it can play a movie without dying haha

EDIT: Forgot to add that this trackpad is lovely. Very responsive, no 'dead' spots etc. So overall it seems I'm getting the real Apple experience this time instead of the disappointing crud I had with the last machine lol
 
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I wonder if the first one had some problem with cooling, making it throttle things down to prevent overheating. Poor cooling could also explain the poor reliability too. I remember reading when ifixit did a teardown of the new mbp they found excessive amounts of thermal paste was used
 
No-One said:
I wonder if the first one had some problem with cooling, making it throttle things down to prevent overheating. Poor cooling could also explain the poor reliability too. I remember reading when ifixit did a teardown of the new mbp they found excessive amounts of thermal paste was used
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That was quite possibly a contributing factor, yes. But there were definitely other faults. For example, I asked about the security of my personal data, since the Apple Store were keeping my old machine (and hence, hdd). The guy said that wasn't an issue, and that he was happy to secure erase my old drive before my eyes before I left the store. :)

However, no matter how many times he tried, the usb hdd he booted from just couldn't mount the drive, and it (my old machine) kept crashing out. So there were different issues for sure. I'm wondering if it wasn't a logic board fault, since gfx, hdd, cpu, and RAM all being faulty is possible but highly improbable. The logic board (which controls all of the above) being faulty would be a reasonable assumption, I think.

Any any rate, I'm much happier now and the new machine feels much better.
 
Still very odd for a Mac Pro..could understand a faulty bit of hardware ( i never judge products on hardware faults..at the end of the day they are assebled on a production line..things happen)....for for what appears a couple of failures and in yrou own words the buildquality sounds dodgy..is their a chance during trasit it was on teh edge of a crate pile and it got a really bad knock. drop?

I dont have my 2010 13" pro anymore..but when I did it was one of the finest products I handled/ used.
 
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