MBP 13" Questions

theheyes

theheyes

theheyes

Soldato
Joined
17 Jan 2007
Posts
8,944
Location
Manchester
Hi guys,

Well, it looks like my white 2006 MacBook is beginning to give up the ghost. It has been a bit tatty for a long while and now the screen is failing. I don't really have many complaints because it has been used and abused pretty much daily for 3 years straight. There is still life left in it - I think I'm going to use it for testing purposes.

Anyway, for general usage, I'm considering the 13" MacBook Pro as a replacement and I have a few questions.

  • Firstly, the old classic, would you wait or buy now? I'm not desperate, but I take it there is not a significant update on the horizon? I was thinking of waiting till Snow Leopard, but from what I've read the upgrade cost is minimal.

  • One thing that could be improved with my current MacBook is durability. Am I correct in thinking that these new aluminium MacBooks with their glass screens are much more sturdy? Are there any common defects I should know about?

  • Another thing that annoyed me about the MacBook was the fans - a little bit of CPU activity and the fans ramped up after a couple of minutes. I suppose it isn't a dealbreaker, but is this situation improved much?

  • Is the 9400M compatible with OpenCL?

That's about it really, I'm going to do some more reading this afternoon but you know what it's like - if you take your finger off the pulse for a couple of months you pretty much know nothing.

Any input from MBP owners who have lived with it for a while would be much appreciated. :)

Cheers.
 
theheyes said:
  • Firstly, the old classic, would you wait or buy now? I'm not desperate, but I take it there is not a significant update on the horizon? I was thinking of waiting till Snow Leopard, but from what I've read the upgrade cost is minimal.
Click to expand...

They were only updated two months ago or so, so now is a good time to buy unless you want to save yourself £7.95 and wait for Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.

http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/#MacBook_Pro

theheyes said:
  • One thing that could be improved with my current MacBook is durability. Am I correct in thinking that these new aluminium MacBooks with their glass screens are much more sturdy? Are there any common defects I should know about?
Click to expand...

As a whole the machine should be more durable due to their aluminium construction, but at the moment the 13" MacBook Pro suffers from EFI and Graphics Card problems.

theheyes said:
  • Another thing that annoyed me about the MacBook was the fans - a little bit of CPU activity and the fans ramped up after a couple of minutes. I suppose it isn't a dealbreaker, but is this situation improved much?
Click to expand...

The fan activity is usually caused by Flash in a browser windows, programs hijacking an entire processor core or video that isn't being hardware accelerated. The first is unlikely to be fixed for a long time.

theheyes said:
  • Is the 9400M compatible with OpenCL?
Click to expand...

Yes
 
Cheers for that, and Flash in browsers is indeed the main culprit. I just wondered if they were a bit more heat tolerant. Like I say it's not a dealbreaker and won't put me off.

I'm very interested to hear about these potential problems - is this the EFI issue you are talking about? When the prices come down I'm thinking of upgrading to an SSD so this might be something to keep an eye on.

I've googled for graphics problems, but most point to articles and threads prior to the 2009 update. Is this something that has been fixed? What is the problem you are referring to?

Thanks a lot.
 
theheyes said:
Cheers for that, and Flash in browsers is indeed the main culprit. I just wondered if they were a bit more heat tolerant.
Click to expand...

They are pretty well thermally designed, but Apple tends to run them hot and only kick in the fan if really needed.

theheyes said:
I'm very interested to hear about these potential problems - is this the EFI issue you are talking about?
Click to expand...

Yeah it is the latest 1.7 EFI update which has basically destroyed two of my friends machines. Causes a lot of kernel panics, crashes and the inability to re-install OS X.

theheyes said:
I've googled for graphics problems, but most point to articles and threads prior to the 2009 update. Is this something that has been fixed? What is the problem you are referring to?
Click to expand...

Was a problem before as well with older Nvidia laptop GPUs think Nvidia and Apple have fixed that one, but it seems the 9400M or the chipsets they are using the in latest models have problems too. Graphical corruption and artifacting on the screen mainly.

for example this:

index.png
 
about the sound of the fan, my 13'' macbook pro dosent make a sound. i mean you can literly noting unless your head is 1'' from it. dose get a lil warm but nothing too bad.
The 9400m graphics seems very good and am pleased with it.
I do think that the laptop can get damiged very easily and take very good care of it. i would not like to drop it. my gf has a laptop she literaly stands on and dose nothing, i would defo not advise this on the mb pro lol :)
overall i couldent be happyer with it.
imo buy it now as apple will unlikely change the price any time soon and you will not regret it :)
 
as for the noise on your near 3 year old macbook it will probably be due to dust build up inside. i opened up my one of similar age and the heatsink looked like it was a grey sponge. much better afterwards. also use a fan control app .
 
Just bought a 13" MBP for my girlfriend, it is very quiet in use I have yet to hear the fans come on. I am just doing light web browsing and the CPU is sitting at 36c.

It is very quick in normal tasks and runs both XP and Vista well and I managed to get just over 6 hours out of the battery. Overall a good laptop and it worked out cheaper with her HE discount than a 13" Dell XPS with the same spec, I still refuse to buy a MBP for myself until they fit a blu-ray drive.
 
I'll be taking good care of it (they aint cheap after all) but they will be inevitably get dinged against a doorframe every now and again. The actual main reason it looks tatty is because it's held together with masking tape in places due to the infamous splitting plastic, which isn't really my fault. I don't expect it to be a "tough book" by any means but hopefully a bit more robust than the plastic was.

Good to hear about the battery life. Getting 3.5 hours out of the MacBook was something I really liked about it (after suffering 1-1.5 hours with some of the cheaper Windows laptops) so 6 hours is brilliant.

About the fan issue, it was a problem from the very beginning but seems to have got worse over time so perhaps it does have some dust build up.

I've been looking at this page regarding the Snow Leopard upgrade http://www.apple.com/uk/macosx/uptodate/ because I'm not buying from Apple direct (it's cheaper at that south-american rainforest store) so I hope they come under the umbrella of "authorised reseller". I'm looking forward to Snow Leopard almost as much as the new lappy - OpenCL and Grand Central in particular - nice geeky features. I plan to install an SSD in it next year when the prices come down (and I've recovered from dropping the cash on this thing) so I expect it to be a great little performer.

Cheers for the help anyway, from what I've read the good points seem to far outweigh the bad and it looks like a great laptop that will last me at least as long as my white MacBook. I'm going to place an order today and I might even treat myself to express delivery. ;)
 
Love my Macbook that I got just before the named it the Macbook Pro.

The build quality is amazing, and the best I have used when it comes to laptops and the like.

Mine is pretty much silent all the time and as the person above said, you can only really here it if your very very close to it. I am also impressed with the 9400m. Much better than the Intel chipsets that were used in the previous model.

;)
 
In normal conditions my current MacBook is fine, can't hear it at all, but if anything pegs the processor (even at 50%, usually Flash) for a couple of minutes the fans ramp up big style and are very loud. I thought maybe the aluminium case might act like a giant heatsink. ;)

It will probably be the first thing I try out once it's all set up.
 
Well, it arrived. Very nice bit of kit. Just munching through the software updates at the moment. I actually forgot about the new gesture trackpad - it's great. I'm loving the swipe to move back and forth between web pages. The keyboard keys feel a bit softer too - can't wait to try the backlit keys later on - I've always wanted that feature but previous MBPs have been stupidly expensive.

It will get better over time too, I plan the following upgrades - probably in this order:

  • Snow Leopard
  • SSD
  • 4GB RAM

Should be a good little workhorse for the next few years. :)
 
I really like the look of the 13" MBP. Very tempted to get one when Snow Leopard is inc.

My 13" MB (2.0 C2D, 2GB, 80GB, Superdrive, Leopard) is around 2.5 years old now. Still works perfectly but there is some cracking to the plastic where your wrists rest. Any idea how much it would be worth currently?
 
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