Best Refurb MacBook Pro Value, AirPort Card Thermal Issues, Opera vs. iCab, and More

• 2.4 GHz or 2.5 GHz Previous Generation MacBook Pro?
• Original AirPort Card May Be Heat Sensitive
• Opera Fan Speaks Again
• FireWire 400 and the Unibody MacBook

2.4 GHz or 2.5 GHz Previous Generation MacBook Pro?

From Torie:

I wanted to say first of all reading your articles on Low End Mac and MacOpinion are a few of the reasons why I've been sitting on the fence ready to make the jump to the Mac OS.

I've been building PCs as a hobby since 1997 but have not enjoyed how buggy and temperamental Microsoft Windows can be. Like you, I don't believe in going for the latest and greatest, so I've decided to go with a previous generation MacBook Pro as my first Mac since the Apple II and Macintosh that I used in grade school over 20 years ago.

That being said, now that Apple have the refurbished previous generation 2.5 GHz 15" MacBook Pro on sale for $1,499, do you think that is a better value than the 2.4 GHz, or is the $150 price difference not justified for what you get? Thanks for any help you can give!

Hi Torie,

Personally I would opt for the 2.5 GHz model at that price, as I think you easily get the $150 worth of extra value, although I found it difficult to justify the $500 (25% higher) price spread between the 2.4 GHz and 2.5 GHz models at the original full price.

You should find a tremendous difference with any MBP compared with those Apple IIs and early Macs you remember. :-)

Charles

Original AirPort Card May Be Heat Sensitive

From Bill Brown:

Yo Charles and Dan,

Interesting experiences here about our beloved Pismos. My Pismo is my main Mac. Has been for two years now. It works for me very well doing all that I do. I do not baby it. It has traveled all over the country with me, often in trying circumstances. It always delivers beautifully including online performance using its now slow first generation AirPort Card. Well, except for one experience....

For no accountable reason, I lost all signal. I went to the basement to recycle the wireless router bringing me my DSL, but this didn't help at all. Besides, my wife's peecee was doing online perfectly, and she was just grinning at the experience I was having with my Mac. After the usual diagnostics and troubleshooting, I was beginning to suspect the AirPort Card. I had a spare up at the senior center where I fix the Macs. Tomorrow I would swap the card and see.

Didn't have to swap no stinkin' AirPort Card. First thing in the morning before breakfast, I fired up the Pismo to confirm a dead card. It wasn't dead! My weather widgets brought me in my normal startup weather briefing. Wireless on the Pismo was okay! This is good. I dismissed the event of the prior evening as a fluke and moved on not thinking much about it. Until....

In another week, same thing. Next morning, all was fine. Once a week or so, the wireless signal just disappeared. Didn't matter if it was at home or away from home. It just stopped. Hmmm....

So I swapped in a known to be working AirPort Card - and wireless never dropped out again. This wasn't my AirPort Card, so I swapped mine back in. And the signal drop about once a week came right back. It was the pesky card after all.

This was going on all through the middle, the warmest part of summer. Hmmm.... Here in the far northern latitudes of the Great Pacific Northwest, the warmest time of day inside is actually in the evening - while I am online. Noting the time of signal loss told me the card was dying when the evening was at its warmest. This AirPort Card seemed to be suffering from the heat, only to recover in the cool of the night. With notes as to time time of failure, I also noted the failures becoming more frequent. Towards the end of summer, the card was dying near daily. And finally it died utterly; won't work in any supporting Mac. Toast. Damn.

Interesting to note: Early on in my troubleshooting, I ran this failing AirPort Card in our G4 MDD Power Mac 24/7 up at the senior center. It never failed. There is a lot of cooling air moving about freely in an MDD.

Discovering heat seemed to be the culprit, I altered my MOP (Mac operating procedure). I have always left my Macs on 24/7, Safari and Mail on all the time, and AirPort turned on all the time. While the heat produced in a Pismo isn't great, it is a bit crowded inside the Pismo, and this card might benefit from not being run so hard inside the Pismo. I have become a regular at shutting down at night, not having Safari and Mail up all the time, and turning AirPort off when I really wasn't doing online stuff. Maybe my replacement AirPort Card will have a cooler life for itself.

Rereading the story that Bill was having with the AirPort Card in his Pismo, It may be that he has a card failing or sensitive to heat buildup also.

Bill

Hi Bill,

Thanks for the report. Intermittent faults are the most challenging ones to diagnose. It does sound like a thermal or thermally-induced fault. It's boilerplate that heat over time is the enemy of electronic components, and our old Pismos are not getting any younger.

Makes you wonder how the much hotter-running machines of the Macintel era will fare down the road.

Charles

Opera Fan Speaks Again

From Leif:

Hi Charles,

I find myself using Opera more and more. I actually like iCab more, but I find that Opera demands less of my perhaps inferior computer - a PowerBook G4 with 1.33 GHz processor.

Thus I have experienced what the boss of Opera has said, that Opera cares for the "lower-end" computers. I guess I have a memory problem, and Opera handles this much better.

So there seems to be proof in the pudding.

Leif Halvard

Hi Leif,

I have 1.5 GB of RAM in my old G4 PowerBook, also with a 1.33 GHz processor. I use both Opera and iCab, and I like both a lot, but I would say that on the balance I like Opera the best. Stuff like the handy zoom and image toggling buttons in the browser window and the way text copies and pastes from Opera tip the scales for me, plus of course that Opera is faster.

Charles

Hi Charles,

Having translated iCab into Norwegian, I cannot possibly be 100% neutral. :-) But, yes, you touch on some things. Perhaps my eyes are not what they were - I'm not sure. (No glasses yet.) But I have really come to love the zoom!

BTW, do you use the Filters in iCab?

Leif Halvard

Hi Leif,

I've worn glasses since I was 8 (that would be 49 years ago) and am currently resisting (with mixed success) the transition to bifocals. The smaller default sizes on higher-res displays are also a factor in making convenient zoom an attractive feature.

I can't say that I have ever done much with the filters in iCab. Do you find them useful?

Charles

FireWire 400 and the Unibody MacBook

From Tim:

Just a quick two cents worth on FireWire on the Unibody MacBook, looks from here that Apple might've faced a greater penalty shipping with one USB and one FireWire with the intended market. For example, it would be great for my daughter to take to university next fall, and I hope to get one for her. For myself, not so good; I use a FW400 drive for backup and have a miniDV camcorder that has a USB port that might or might not work in iMovie. They chose for better sales, for the rest of us; refurbished Unibody MacBook Pros can't be too far off, and Other World Computing has a 9-to-6 pin FireWire cable for less than $9.

Tim

Hi Tim,

I would never suggest that they dump a USB port in favor of FireWire. Two USB ports is short of adequate. I want FireWire and two - or better three - USB ports. Guess I need a MacBook Pro - either Unibody or old school. :-)

Charles

Go to the Miscellaneous Ramblings Mailbag index.