Being a first time Mac owner, it was a lil bit confusing working around a lot of the programs. Luckily Apple’s software is relatively intuitive and I managed to get most of the stuff working and the things I couldn’t figured out I just googled. From two-button Windows machines to the one giant glass button of the Macbook, the new all glass trackpad was surprisingly easy to get use to. You even have the option to set the trackpad to “right click” at the bottom right corner of the trackpad, so there isn’t that much of a drop off of where to press when right clicking.
The screen is made of glass and like a very clean window, it is super glossy. You can pretty much see the reflection of everything on it. Even though it is glossy, if you crank up the brightness of the screen up you should still be able to see what you need to clearly.
After I got done playing with OSX operating system and examining the intricate designs of the Macbook, I decided to go to an operating system I’m more familiar with…. Windows XP Pro.
I started the Bootcamp Assistant and created my partition that’s needed for Windows installation. I then followed directions on formatting and installing of Windows XP Sp2. Bootcamp Windows Install Instructions (Need to be at least sp2)
The install was very straightforward and the driver installation process was even more straightforward which allowed for a very quick and painless process. What you do is basically after Windows is installed, you pop in the OSX Leopard disk and just run the disk, and follow the prompts to install the drivers. After windows and drivers finished installing I am looking machine that’s running the best of both Microsoft and Apple
So now I should be happy right? Not exactly and I fear I wasted 130 dollars in restocking fees.
The pros of this laptop is how sturdy it feels, this is probably due to the aluminum unibody casing that Apple spent half the time talking about on Tuesday. A lot of the features are really cool, unique, and good looking. I absolutely love the slot loading cd/dvd drive that comes with the Macbooks. I also thought the little green battery indicator feature on the left side was a nice touch. And the aluminum that makes up the laptop is very sturdy and cool to the touch. But the best is the overall minimalistic stylings of the Macbook are very eye catching and appealing.
However, there are some aspects of this laptop that I am not exactly thrilled about. Regarding the design, the laptop is a lot bigger and heavier than I expected. Since the screen was 13.3 inches I assumed it was going to be the same size as my old VAIO SZ series, instead the Macbook seems a lot wider and heavier than my SZ. The width of the Macbook is probably the same size as that of a 14inch laptop at least. The reason is probably because of the large bezel area that surrounds the screen and it results in a large base for the Macbook. Another minus for the design is that the palm/wrist area of the laptop has sharp edges, I occasionally like to type while laying on my bed, so I’m like parallel with the base of the laptop, and because of this my wrists are always right on top of the sharp edges and it digs into my skin.
Since I bought the Macbook, it froze on me twice and I had to do a hard shutdown both times, once while I was in Windows and once in OSX (Gasps!). I tried to shutdown the comp in OSX but it just stayed there and wouldn’t launch anything, I tried to force quit, did the Mac version of ctrl + alt + delete and nothing. After 5 minutes of trying to figure out what’s going on, I decided to pull the trigger. While in Windows, after coming out of sleep/standby mode, the trackpad locked and wouldn’t allow me to click on my user icon to let me log in. After a while, I decided to pull the trigger. Also on Windows I usually watch some avi files that I have shared over my wireless network. I set the Macbook Window’s portion up with the same thing I would any of my other laptops and when I played the files, it would stream skip annoyingly. It would play fine for 5-7 seconds and then freeze, and then play really fast and repeat. It may be because of my wireless router, but this never happened with any of my other laptops.
Also the track pad is limited on the Windows’ side, you can set the option to right click with two fingers but it just feels awkward and some of the functionality is lost because the whole trackpad is the touchpad, even the buttons, so when you try to something simple like click and drag an icon around, it’s just annoying.
I guess Macs are not meant to be installed with Windows. Maybe Bootcamp’s is intended to just have Windows as an option for when a program that you need is not compatible with OSX and is not something meant to be used for long term.
