First Impressions of My Unibody MacBook

2009 – My Apple Certified Refurbished (ACR) 13″ 2.0 GHz Late 2008 Aluminum MacBook arrived last Thursday afternoon, just a couple of hours short of a week after I ordered it, having been air-shuttled by FedEx back and forth across the continent twice, from Rancho Cordova, CA, to Memphis, TN, to Calgary, Alberta, to Halifax, […]

Charles W Moore Going Intel with a Unibody MacBook

2009 – After equivocating for nearly three years about what hardware would become my vehicle for transitioning to the Macintel experience, I’ve finally made a decision. Last Thursday afternoon I ordered a 2.0 GHz Late 2008 Unibody Aluminum MacBook from Apple Canada – an Apple Certified Refurbished unit for Can$200 (14%) off the price of […]

25 Years of Macintosh

The Macintosh officially turned 25 on January 24, 2009, the anniversary of the day Apple announced the original Macintosh to its Board of Directors and to the world – and the world of personal computing has never been the same.

MacBook White (Early 2009)

In an unexpected development, Apple quietly changed the specs of the MacBook White in mid-January. The updated model has the same 2.0 GHz CPU as the entry-level Aluminum Unibody MacBook – and also the same Nvidia GeForce 9400M graphics processor.

17″ MacBook Pro (Early 2009)

A lot of features in the Early 2009 17″ MacBook Pro were anticipated based on the Early 2008 17″ model and the Late 2008 15″ Unibody MacBook Pro: Unibody construction, dual GPUs, glass trackpad, glossy display standard, and 1920 x 1200 resolution – and losing the FireWire 400 port wasn’t unexpected.

Practical iMac G3 Applications and Upgrades

One of my interesting jobs at Low End Mac is compiling our price trackers, which have evolved quite a bit over the years. We do price trackers for all Macs that are supported by some version of Mac OS X, from Beige G3 Power Macs and WallStreet PowerBooks through today’s Intel-based Macs. We also track the […]

1 GHz Pismo the Fastest G3 ‘Book Ever

Once upon a time, CPU upgrade vendor PowerLogix offered a 1 GHz G3 CPU upgrade for the Pismo PowerBook based on the IBM PowerPC 750GX CPU, doubling the clock speed of the fastest stock Pismo – and with a full megabyte of Level 2 (L2) cache also running at 1 GHz.

The Leopard Experience at 867 MHz

2008 – I just acquired an 867 MHz PowerBook G4. This is the slowest Mac officially supported by Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. For anyone wondering whether running a such a high spec modern OS on an older Mac works well, I say go for it. You will be surprised. I was.

Could Linux Ever Replace Mac OS X?

I’m not a conformist. Being a Mac user puts me in the minority of computer users. But I could go one step further. With my foot firmly in the door of Open Source software, would an Open Source operating system be the next step forward – or would it be a step back?

No High Definition iTunes Video for You

If you thought buying videos through the iTunes Store was the online equivalent of buying them on DVD or Blu-ray, think again. In a completely unexpected development, owners of the October 2008 MacBook, MacBook Pro, and MacBook Air have discovered that the new Mini DisplayPort includes High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) – and this makes it […]

Free Alternatives to Microsoft Office

As with operating systems, Microsoft also has the market cornered for office suites. Microsoft Office has long been the de facto standard in offices across the world – and in homes too – probably because it follows having Windows. There are good alternatives for Mac users – and for Windows users too.

Nikon D40 Provides Lots of Quality at a Nice Price

2008: I recently decided that it was finally time for me to purchase my first digital SLR. I’d been looking at various cameras, features, and megapixels, and I decided that the Nikon D40 fit my needs (and wallet). Uncle Sam’s recent generosity of the economic stimulus check made the purchase even easier.

15″ MacBook Pro (Late 2008)

The era of formed aluminum Apple notebooks has come to an end. The new 15″ MacBook Pro (MBP) is carved from a 2.5 lb. block of solid aluminum. The result is a quarter-pound enclosure – and 2.25 lb. of aluminum that’s recycled to make more enclosures. It’s even thinner, the first time Apple has built […]

MacBook White (Late 2008)

It looked like the end of the line for the plastic bodied MacBook design introduced in May 2006. The October 2008 MacBook White was the first to dip below the $1,000 mark, but that was because there was not much new about it. Apple had pretty much taken the 2.1 GHz Penryn MacBook, replaced the […]

Aluminum MacBook (Late 2008)

The Aluminum MacBook uses the same unibody construction as the 15″ MacBook Pro and now has an LED-backlit display. The top-end 2.4 GHz MacBook also has a backlit keyboard. The Unibody MacBooks use new, more energy efficient versions of the Core 2 CPU: P7350 in the 2.0 GHz model and P8600 in the 2.4 GHz […]