Best MacBook Value a Refurbished MacBook Pro
From Brian in response to New Unibody MacBook or
Discontinued 15" MacBook Pro?:
Thanks greatly to your words on the new MacBook models (am I really
the only one out there that thinks the name "MacBook" is stupid?), I
was able finally come to a decision about a new computer. For the last
few years I've been running a G4
iBook, which I've been extremely happy with. When I bought it brand
new (summer of 2004), the decision was almost a no-brainer, and though
I've had my share of hardware problems with it (thankfully I have
AppleCare), I really couldn't have asked for much more from it.
At the time, the iBook G4 was perfect for me: ample hard drive
space, speed, rugged, good wireless reception, and the 14" model seemed
to fit very well on my lap or on a desktop. The MacBooks that replaced it didn't
speak as well to me. The lack of a modem was a killer, as I still had
need to use it depending on where I was taking it, and I had my
apprehensions about the glossy screen, but mostly, the small size felt
similar in a lot of ways to the 12" iBook, which I opted away from
buying because of how awkward it felt when sitting on my lap compared
to it's slightly larger sibling (personal preference).
This year, debate over these issues seemed to be a moot point,
though, as I realized my iBook was down to its last 3 gigs of space and
that freeing up more space meant several compromises. So I waited
patiently for the new MacBooks to arrive to see what came out and was
thoroughly impressed. However, I do have a budget, and the lack of
FireWire in the new models meant that I wouldn't be able to connect my
vid cam to the computer anymore. I've heard the argument that this is
an "opportunity" to invest in a new camera, but I reiterate: I have a
budget. So that left me bouncing back and forth between the MBP and the
MB, not knowing what to get.
Then, finally, this weekend while I pined away at the new models,
not knowing what to do, I noticed a previous gen refurb MBP for $1,349.
Same clock speed as the current $1,999 model, still faster graphics
than the new MB, and more than 3 times the storage of my old iBook, not
to mention FireWire 400 and 800 built in still, as well as the larger
size that I'm more comfortable with, for a mere $50 more than the new
MB. The clincher was when I realized that the previous generation MBP
also had a multitouch trackpad that had the multitouch features I
really care about anyways. I couldn't resist and bought it. Now I
eagerly wait for it to arrive and get to finally join the Intel age.
Kinda sad that the no-brainer decision this time around was for the
previous model. The new MBs seem like they were oh-so-close to being
amazing, but missed it by just "that much."
My biggest concern now? What to do with the old iBook. That's a
tough one - its only real problem was I was out of disk space, it still
does everything I need it to otherwise, but then, some cash to help me
fund AppleCare for the MBP would be great as well. That and how to make
the right colored sticker so I can cover the name "MacBook" with
"PowerBook."
Thanks for going over this issue in such detail recently, it really
helped me keep all options in mind while I made my decision.
Brian
Hi Brian,
Glad you found the article helpful. I'm with you on
the nomenclature. PowerBook was a great name. MacBook is a dumb name,
but I guess we're stuck with it.
I hope you will share your impressions of the 15" "old
school" Pro when it arrives.
As for your old iBook, it isn't impossible (just
difficult) to upgrade the hard drive, but that would probably be a
redundant expense at this juncture for you.
I also agree that the new unibody machines could have
been spectacular and didn't miss by much, but the FireWire thing is a
deal breaker for me. OTOH, I just recommended that my daughter go for a
new Unibody MacBook to
replace her ailing iBook G4. Her needs are different from mine, and I
think the new model would be a perfect fit for her. I'm not sure
whether she will take my advice, though.
Charles
Best Time to Buy a MacBook Pro?
From Philip:
Dear Mr. Moore,
I agree that the last-generation MBP is
a great value - but I also figure that over the next couple of months
it'll get even to be an even better one. I want to be able to get a new
model (or refurb), though; and I guess at some point the price might
end up going back up, particularly for the ones with matte screens. A
second consideration is that, if I sell after updated MacBooks are
released in Oct/Nov 2009 (as I figure they might be), I'd like to be
able to sell it while a buyer could still get AppleCare.
So, when do you think is the best time to buy?
Philip
Hi Philip,
Whenever you take the plunge, a few months or even
weeks later you'll probably be able to get more for the same money or
cheaper, but the bleeding edge is a moving target as well. I bought my
current 17" 1.33 GHz
PowerBook as an Apple Certified refurbished unit for less than half
what it listed for new. It had no signs of having been previously used
and has never missed a beat in nearly three years of intensive use, but
I did have to make my peace with it being well back of the state of the
art at the time of purchase.
To answer your question, the best time to buy is when
your current equipment is no longer capable of doing the job you need
or want it to do, possibly combined with other considerations such as
the likely diminishing availability of matte display models and
AppleCare eligibility, if that is an issue for you. Personally, I've
been using Apple laptops since 1996, have never bought AppleCare, and
so far never missed it. The money I've saved by not buying it would buy
me a new MacBook I expect. However, that's just an observation and not
a recommendation. Everyone has to calculate their own risk tolerance
and comfort level.
Charles
Unibody MacBook Too Big to Replace 12"
PowerBook
From Bruce in response to Unibody MacBook the
Logical Successor to the 12" PowerBook:
Charles,
I'm not sure I understand your argument here. The only thing
that makes the Unibody MacBook more like the 12" PowerBook is the
aluminum case, right? There is no improvement on size (footprint
is far more important than a slight change in thickness and weight)
compared to the old MacBook, and you have to give up FireWire.
I don't see how this makes it any more of a successor than the old
MacBook.
I
am a dedicated owner of a nearly worn-out 12" PowerBook, and I was
going to "give up" and get the aluminum MacBook. But with the loss of
FireWire, I will probably buy a refurbished black plastic MacBook soon
(can't stomach the white). I paid ~$1,800 for my 12" PowerBook and
would pay as much for a real successor. But now I'd rather save money
and get the cheap refurb than pay a few hundred more for something that
I still won't be satisfied with.
An anecdote: I took my 12" PowerBook into the local Apple Store to
do a side-by-side comparison with current models. Another customer came
over and picked up my 12" and started examining it. After pointing out
that it was mine, not the store's, he exclaimed, "It's so small - I
thought it must be one of the new models".
Bruce
Hi Bruce,
You have a point, but the unibody architecture is
definitely the marquee feature of the new models. The operative analogy
would be to the relationship between the 12" PowerBook and the 12"
iBook. They actually had a lot in common engineering-wise and were
built by the same supplier, while the larger PowerBooks were developed
and built separately. The PowerBook was slightly smaller than the
iBook, and there were of course a number of other distinctions, but the
biggest difference was the aluminum case.
Ergo: the aluminum unibody MacBook is to the 12"
PowerBook what the plastic MacBook is to the iBook.
Yes, the footprint is larger, but in pretty well all
other aspects - weight, thickness, and total volume - the unibody
MacBook compares very favorably with the 12" PowerBook.
My projection (and I could be totally mistaken) is
that Apple will come out with something to battle the PC netbook
phenomenon, but I'm doubtful that it will be anywhere near a
full-featured laptop computer like the 12" PowerBook was - more likely
an iPhoneBook of sorts. As I said in the article, this unibody MacBook
is as close to a Macintel replacement for the 12" PowerBook as we're
likely to see.
If you can't live without FireWire, a leftover plastic
black MacBook would be an excellent choice, but it's also got a larger
footprint than your PowerBook and is significantly heavier as well.
I've spent a lot of time over the past couple of weeks weighing the
alternatives for my own system upgrade. I like white computers, so
could happily live with a white MacBook in that context, but the poky
GMA X3100 graphics support doesn't appeal to me, and I'm leaning toward
a refurb. old school MacBook Pro.
Charles
Pismo Noise
From Steve Riley:
Dear Sir,
I was very interested in reading your review of the
Pismo, especially noting that you had two of these machines
yourself. You actually prompted me to buy one on
eBay, but I won't hold you responsible, LOL. I have always been a
Windows PC man up until now with just an odd glance towards a Mac in
the past, so this is really all new territory for me. The one thing you
didn't mention in your review of these Pismos (and no other report on
them that I have read does either) is their ambient noise, or lack of
it. I don't mean the noise coming from the speakers.
I'm talking about whirring noises coming from the internals. There's
nothing worse that watching a silent part of a horror film and the
blasted fans starts up and scares the **** out of you, as happens on my
Compaq/HP laptop. Could you do me the favour of firing yours up and
having a listen? I'm guessing that any noise they do make is now
tuned out by your ears and brain, so you probably won't hear anything
unless you actively listen for it.
It makes no difference really. The die has been cast, and I have
already bought and paid for the Pismo with expected delivery towards
the end of next week, but it would be nice to know what to expect. BTW,
the Pismo I bought was eBay item number 290273563337 - more expensive
than most, but the seller has a reputation for selling good Mac
computers.
Thanks for reading my drivel and for writing your excellent
columns.
Steve
Hi Steve,
Yes, the Pismo's cooling fan is a howler, but I've had
it cut in so few times on the three Pismos I've owned that it's always
a shock when it does - usually in high summer when intensely
multitasking. I use Pismos for several hours a day every day, and I
think that in 2008 I've probably only heard the fan start up once, and
that's on a machine with a 550 MHz G4 processor upgrade and a 5400 RPM
hard drive.
Of course, I live in Canada.
Movie watching might however be one activity that
would generate enough processor heat to trigger the fan, but I've
watched full-length movies on G3 PowerBooks and not been bothered with
it.
The 5400 RPM hard drive in one of my machines is
moderately audible, but the 100 GB Seagate in the other (4200 RPM) is
pleasantly quiet.
Charles
Installing OS X with FireWire Target Disk Mode
From Jeremy in response to Installing
OS X 10.4 'Tiger' on DVD-Challenged Macs Using FireWire Target Disk
Mode and Using FireWire Target Disk
Mode to Install OS X on Macs without DVD Drives:
Hi Charles,
A couple of years ago I picked up an iMac G3 for my mum to use, and I
did the whole OS X (Tiger) install using Target Disk Mode (TDM), using
my iBook as an expensive external DVD drive. All went well, and the
machine has been running without a hitch for the last 2.5 years.
Until the hard drive died.
No drama though - I made a backup of all the data to my Linux
server, then swapped the hard drive for a spare 40 gig one we had lying
around. This time, however, I couldn't get the installer running right
away in TDM. Recently I had installed Debian Linux on the iBook, and
even when booting up the iMac while holding down the 'C' key, the
bootloader "Y boot" came up. It offered an option to boot from the
CD-ROM drive, though I possibly got the same grey screen as the reader
reference in the above article may have seen. I don't know if their
problem may have been similar (possibly another third party boot
loader?), though the work around was to boot the iMac G3 while holding
down the Option key. This came up with Open Firmware boot menu,
offering both the Debian system and the DVD installer (both being
offered via FireWire). I simply selected the DVD install option and
clicked the continue arrow, and the install once again went fine.
Incredibly, I was then able to put the old hard drive into an
external FireWire enclosure and restore all the data without relying on
the data I had backed up to the Linux server (still, making the backup
was obviously a worthwhile step, since once the old hard drive gets so
hot it won't work at all until it's been powered down for 4-6+
hours).
Regards,
Jeremy
Hi Jeremy,
Thanks for the report and tip. Bootability is
sometimes a matter of experimenting until you find the right formula.
Glad you were able to restore your data.
Charles
Using Virtual PC 7 with Leopard
Hey Charles,
I just wrote an article about running
Virtual PC 7 under Leopard (under which it loses its ability to
access optical drives):
I also included some VPC benchmarks, a tutorial to running Vista on
your PowerPC, and a (sad) Word 2007 vs. Word 2008 start up video
comparison: 12.6 seconds for Word 2008 to start up natively - and only
9.6 seconds for Word 2007 under emulation. [Editor's note: This is on a
dual 1.8 GHz Power Mac
G5, on which VPC simulated a 550 MHz Pentium Pro CPU.
dk]
I think some of your readers might find this interesting, especially
the Word comparison.
Yours,
Brian G. Reilly
pwrmac.com
Thanks for the link, Brian.
Charles
Using Filters in iCab
From Leif:
Hi Charles,
You wrote:
"I can't say that I have ever done much with the
filters in iCab. Do you find them
useful?"
Yes, but the same function would perhaps be less useful in Opera - because Opera is so powerful.
Anyway, with the Filters you can refuse to load ads and stuff from
certain pages, making them lighter to load - and less distractive to
read.
Since you work for online magazines that, I bet, earn money on ads,
you perhaps do not want to go into this field. :-)
BTW, the Filters which are shipped with iCab (you may have to
import/load them once, first) enable you to e.g. download YouTube
videos and other stuff. They give you a link on top of the page to do
so. Just to tell you what you can do.
You can also use them to apply CSS to particular pages and so
on.
One use I have had is that I need to print out statements from my
Internet banking system. But since the styling of those statements is
so suboptimal, I created my own CSS to reformat them a little. Well,
actually, I tend to use the CSS panel of iCab for this. Add a CSS sheet
there, and you will find it under the Style sheet men in the View menu.
But it would be more automatic if I had used the Filters for it.
Filters would also have allowed me to create a less sophisticated CSS
sheet.
So, yes, I have some use of it. :-)
Leif Halvard
Editor's note: Low End Mac and most other websites are
funded primarily (and sometimes exclusively) through ads. Some of these
are paid on a per impression basis, while others are paid based on
results - we only receive payment if you click on the ad or buy through
the ad. Ads are what make free websites possible, so we don't generally
encourage blocking ads. However, we understand that it can speed up
page loads, particularly for those on dialup connections.
We use Camino
(a version of Firefox optimized for Mac OS X that works with
10.3.9 and later) as our primary browser at Low End Mac headquarters,
and in Preferences > Web Features we've enabled three of four
"annoyance blocking" features: Prevent sites from changing, moving, or
resizing windows, Block Flash animation, and Block popup windows (we
can set exceptions for specific websites, something Safari still
doesn't offer - blocking popup windows there is all or nothing). We
don't block all web ads (the other option), as they tend to load
quickly with our broadband connection and we want to support the sites
we visit. dk
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