HeroTurko.Net » MacBook

Apple Macbook Pro Hands on Review

Abermaplalm — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 12:37:54 +0000

A couple of months ago I got the iPhone and hoped to generate enough revenue through Sizlopedia to get a brand new Macbook Pro.

I am very pleased to announce that through kind support of my readers and all the traffic, I have finally managed to get hold of one of the most stylish and powerful notebook computers ever made by Apple.

The Apple Macbook Pro is not over-hyped for nothing. It has got a very stylish look, a very powerful CPU and a high-power GPU which delivers the maximum graphics performance. The base model costs around $2000, though I purchased the model with some little higher specs at a price of $2400 from a local Apple dealer.

Some interesting tech specifications of this beauty are:

Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard
15.4 inch Widescreen (1440×900 resolution)
2.5MHz Intel Core 2 Duo Processor
NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT Graphics Processor
2GB RAM and 250GB HDD Space
Built-in iSight Camera
5 Hours of Charged Battery Life

The fact that I have never used Mac OS X ever before in my whole life made it a little hard for me to adapt to this new operating system. Though learning all the way was quite fun in its own.

Mac OS X file system is quite similar to that of Ubuntu as both are Unix based operating systems but quite different to Windows if compared directly. The dock is the most fun thing to use, much like the taskbar in Windows. Also I was surprised to discover that closing an application actually minimizes it to the dock unless you quit it fully.

Overall the Mac experience has been quite interesting for me. I couldn’t resist to install Windows Vista using Bootcamp. The good thing is that the Intel CPU and NVIDIA GPU both make sure I get the best performance and Aero experience just like that of Vista on a PC.

Vista runs as smooth on Macbook Pro as it would run on any PC. Its just the right-click imitation trick on Macbook Pro for Vista that makes it a little hard to use but users eventually get used to it anyway.

Finding applications for Mac OS X is just as easy as for Windows. The installing part is though quite weird as here you don’t have executables (EXE) rather Apple Disk Images (DMG).

One thing they say true about the Macbook Pro is that its not for the average user. Its for elite computing and after experiencing it myself I very well agree to that.

I will be introducing a new category related to Mac here on Sizlopedia where you will be able to read software and tips & tricks related to the Mac. Don’t forget to check it out.

I did all research about the model and prices of my Macbook Pro through Laptopical.com which offers free and unbiased reviews on notebooks and their prices. I recommend everyone to take a look at it before going for a laptop or notebook.

Envy 133 and MacBook Air duke it out in the flesh

Abermaplalm — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 21:26:44 +0000

Sure, we’ve sized these two up theoretically, but how well do Voodoo’s Envy 133 and Apple’s MacBook Air get along when sharing the same meatspace? There are certainly some striking similarities — both have gargantuan trackpads, for instance, but Voodoo has taken things in an aesthetic direction all its own. We just hope these two decide to be friends instead of mortal, cake-cutting enemies.

Disk clone on Mac

Abermaplalm — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 21:16:46 +0000

Since few days am experimenting with few tools to clone my existing Mac disk to another of my USB backup drive (WD 250GB Passport) so that I can re-partition the existing primary disk to have a room for Bootcamp. This is needed because the OS am running is the image from Yahoo! which has lot of tools thats hard to reinstall back. So having a complete image makes the life much easier.

I found two nice tools which can actually clone the disk and moreover they are free.

I could not able to install SuperDuper! for some reason as the downloaded .dmg file is not mountable on 10.4.10, contacted the product support team, and a got a message that the downloaded file is corrupt. I did tried this with all other 3 browsers and from 4 different locations, nothing seemed to be working for me.

On the other hand I was able to install Carbon Copy Cloner without any problems and did a complete clone of the existing disk to USB disk using couple of clicks and it just took few hours to complete (~50GB). To test the backup disk how it really works, I rebooted the Macbook with this USB drive and the system seemed to be up and running from USB disk and behaves exactly as the primary hard drive except that it took little longer to boot.

Carbon Copy Cloner does not support the incremental updates when you wanted to re-clone the disk back where as SuperDuper! does seemed to support this through Smart Update.

Now, its time for me to play with the primary hard disk.

Back to PC Laptop

Abermaplalm — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 21:14:19 +0000

Finally, am back to good and old school technology. Means, I got my new HP PC laptop nc6400 back. After fighting with Macbook Pro for last few months and the problems were never ending and most of the time the Macbook was kind of useless to my prime time production. It gets too hot within an hour of time and on and off everyday the OS hangs and needs a reboot and all my unsaved documents were lost. So, finally I have to make a change.

After I got my HP laptop from Yahoo!, reinstalled Vista on top of XP Professional and got the setup as needed. Now the things are in normal control and I can see that my productivity was increased and am am spending more time in getting the real work done rather than fighting with endless problems. Even though I still have another Macbook Pro, not sure I will spend that much time as I used to spend earlier.

Sketchy pictures of new MacBook, MacBook Pro, and 32GB iPhone surface

accolades — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 20:14:30 +0000

Whoops! Apple’s gone and leaked its brand new aluminum MacBook and redesigned MacBook Pros to the interblogs. Yeah, it seems old Jobsy has really loosened the binds over in Cupertino — he doesn’t care what gets out these days. No, but seriously, some cats on the internet supposedly discovered a .Mac page which appears to display mockups (or actual product renderings) for a new line of laptops, as well as adverts for iTunes 8 and iPhones in the 32GB variety (for Australia, naturally). Of course, this is wild, crazy, unfounded speculation, and likely has no basis in reality at all. Then again, you never know… stranger things have happened. Steve, we await your takedown requests. See full pages for yourself in the gallery after the break.

Update: Looks like MacRumors got duped by its own forum members — these are fan-made mockups. Oh well, at least we can dream.

[Thanks, al and sleuth]