A Cute Little Notebook
Pros:
Ease of use. Set up, connectivity, all extremely easy! Did I say it was easy?
Cons:
Small screen size (13"), fit and finish of the chassis, pricey.
The Bottom Line:
Newer units have all aluminum chassis. A good, easy to use surf board, that's stable and trouble free.
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Overall Rating:
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Author's Review
We needed to replace our existing notebooks as their processors, batteries, and hard drives were all dead or dying.
Not willing to battle Vista, we chose the MacBook.
Connectivity: For a notebook, it has a good number of ports. It connected with our home network easily, needing only the WAP2 passkey. We were surfing the Internet within minutes of unpacking our new computer.
Ease of use: operations are intuitive; however, the smallish screen does makes productivity difficult. For more hard core computing (above and beyond surfing, e-mail, etc...) I would recommend a desktop or something with a much larger screen.
Keyboard: for the size of the unit, it has a good tactile feel and is visually appealing.
Trackpad: I really like the feel and the two finger tracking is a plus. I've used an HP desktop replacement notebook, and I much prefer the Mac Book track pad's 2 finger tracking feature.
It comes with iLife and OS X. (I won't really talk about those because this is a review of the hardware, not the software.) However, I will say, if you are looking for an alternative to Vista, OS X is a very livable option.
Chassis: I owned the original iBook and while I loved how stable the OS was, and how easy it was to use, I was never a fan of the chassis. The plastics seemed cheap and the fit and finish left something to be desired. The seams didn't come together as neatly as I thought they should. Unfortunately, they haven't quite overcome these faults even in this much improved model. As the old model, this new one still doesn't have a solid feel to it. I can tell some of the seams are a little off.
Price: Yep, it's true, you pay an Apple premium. Similarly sized and powered Vista machines will cost you less. However, we felt the time saved by NOT having to debug a new computer was worth paying a premium.
