I recently took delivery of a new MacBook Pro laptop. I opted for the 2.0 GHz version with 2 Gig of Ram as it means I won't need to upgrade for quite a while and it should meet my needs for the forseeable future.My experience so far has been largely positve. I'll start with the negatives first though.
1. Heat - the heat generated by the dual-core chip is enormous. I don't recommend using the laptop on bare legs as I can quite easily see a serious burn resulting! Others have referred to this issue. As yet I see no real resolution of this issue. Mine isn't as a result of the plastic cover over the vent having got stuck as admitted by Apple in some cases as the cause. I did download a couple of widgets to monitor the temp but neither seems to work as far as temp goes.
2. The odd freeze and one instance of kernal panic - though nothing serious as yet.
3. The screen and keyboard show dirt and grease up too easily and heavy use requires frequent cleaning - not serious but a pain nevertheless.
Now for the positives. Too many to go into detail but here are the main ones in my experience:
1. Fast!!! Much faster than my iMac 17" TFT. I have now passed this onto my daughter. Programs such as Vue and DAZ Studio render much quicker and are more of a delight to use than previously. Everything seems to load almost instantaneously and the 2 Gig of RAM makes a huge difference.
2. Windows! Yes, being able to run Win XP when needed is a real boon. I can finally give up on my separate PC. I don't need to do this on a daily basis but it certainly helps being able to just switch over and Parrallels software is blazingly fast at booting Windows... much faster than my PC. I haven't bothered with Boot Camp but my son keeps pestering me to do so so he can see how FPS Creator runs. Perhaps over the summer holidays I'll get around to it. It would be nice to have the option of playing RTW etc on the laptop.
3. The COOL factor - everyone who sees the thing run, especially Keynote presentations, are in awe of the thing and are practically drooling at times! Many keep asking if Keynote is available for the PC and look really disappointed when they find out it isn't.
4. Other pluses are largely the same reasons I prefer any Mac to a PC so I won't bore you here with any of them.
All in all, I am very pleased with my MBP and once I get used to having a laptop as my main computer I am sure I'll like it even more. Great job Apple!
