MBP 13" Questions

theheyes

theheyes

theheyes

Soldato
Joined
17 Jan 2007
Posts
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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.
 
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.
 
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. ;)
 
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. :)
 
Only reason I plan to go SSD before RAM is to try one out - I've heard such good things about them. As soon as I can get a decent 64GB drive for < £100 I'm gonna go for it (ever since I discovered Spotify I have much less demand for HD space). 4GB of RAM would be nice, but 2GB is fine for what I need. I run my main desktop (Windows7/2GB RAM) with memory intensive apps and it is perfectly fine.

I probably wouldn't notice a performance improvement with extra RAM, but I'd hope to do so with an SSD.
 
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