new macbooks...

Andrew · 5th December 2008

After umming and arring about it, I decided to shell out 900 odd and buy one.

To be honest, im actually very impressed with it...

I thought i'd *hate* the new touchpad - I love it.

I thought the RDC control for windows computers would be crap - its a great tool.

VMware fusion enables me to run windows-only programs incredibly easily on my macbook. (i thought it would be a resource hog and do some level of half-assed X forwarding)

Although its early days (3 days into owning the laptop) - I cant think of any reason to power up my dell inspiron.

I've got exchange running fine via thunderbird (albeit the calendar doesnt sync too well), it obviously works with my iphone and I dont need it to sync with the blackberry.

Anyone else played with/ own the macbook ranges?

Craig · 5th December 2008

I bought one of the new Macbooks the day they were released (I'm not an apple fanboy before I'm brushed

). I must say I'm very impressed. It has great battery life, love the new touchpad to the point its very strange going back to the Sony laptops we have, RDC as you said is fantastic and I thought this would have been a big problem for me.. The only 'issue' I have is the glossy screen in some light levels but it's not big enough a problem for me to look at doing something about it.. yet anyway

freethought · 5th December 2008

I've got a 2007 17" MacBook Pro which is awesome (it replaced an ancient 12" iBook). I use Parallels instead of VMware but it does the same thing (VMware Fusion didn't exist when I bought Parallels).
The RDC client works well enough, Microsoft seem to have put some real effort in to it recently (it used to be kind of crap, a bit half arsed).
Was playing with the new touch pads in the Apple store the other day and they seem to work really well. Am really tempted to get a new MacBook Pro but they haven't updated the 17" yet. The Air keeps distracting me too. Argh!
Take a look at the built in Mail.app client. It's much better than Thunderbird in my opinion; you can search your e-mails with Spotlight for a start (although I think Thunderbird may have an experimental way of doing this now).

tema · 5th December 2008

Have had a Macbook for 2 years now, and I use it whenever I travel and work in the datacentres. I used to use Parallels, but now switched to VirtualBox.

midnightsoftwar · 5th December 2008

I've had a MacBook Pro (15") for about 9 months now, and I love it. As said, RDP is fine, Fusion is good.

Plus, of course, its looks amazing

PeteK · 5th December 2008

Oh lord, you lot will have Hacintosh on your Dells/Sonys before the weekend is out... Me I'm quite happy with my Outlook and you can shove Entourage where the sun doesn't shine!

Andrew · 5th December 2008

Guess there is allways one person per forum that has to be a 'basher'

sour grapes perhaps? .... flame baiting aside:

Quote:

Originally Posted by PeteK

Oh lord, you lot will have Hacintosh on your Dells/Sonys before the weekend is out...

Why would I switch to a dell with a dodgy version of OSX after forking out nearly a grand on a macbook?

Quote:

Originally Posted by PeteK

Me I'm quite happy with my Outlook and you can shove Entourage where the sun doesn't shine!

Yes Entourage is shite - and outlook is allegedly being integrated in the next version of office for mac along with better sharepoint integration.etc .etc .etc

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In response to the more constructive posts in the thread...

Craig - aye the glossy screen is a pain when your under strip lights/ florescents - only thing you can do is fiddle with the contrast. And yeah I looked at Microsofts software offerings in general that I switched to open office and VNC till recently... both of which are programs I dont really rate (open office, whilst good as a free package isnt a real alternative to word).

freethought - Does Mail have decent integration for exchange servers? whilst yeah you can connect via imap, will it bring up the global address books.etc? as I was under the impression it couldn't.

PeteK · 5th December 2008

Lol, just one of the guys I work with bought one a while ago, and now there isn't a PC within a hundred yards of him that doesn 't have OSX on it...

I agree to some extent that some of the design is excellent like the magnetic power connector and such, but personally I hate the keyboard, the shiny screen and most of all the continual bleating from said individual about it... Right up until he needs ASDM or similar and has to run XP in a crappy virtual machine!

Karl · 5th December 2008

Lets hope they are more reliable than the last generation of Mac Books (well, the Pro tended to be okay). Dean has 4 batteries in 6 months I think, as they just kept dying, then the logic board went and they wanted nearly £500 to sort it - yeah, right. I know less people with Apple kit, but I know more people with problems with Apple kit than any other. Touch wood my MBP (An original Core Duo) is still going, but it only gets very minimal use - once a week if that usually.

JSamuel · 5th December 2008

Strange,
Not had many problems like you've had... There was a point where batteries were bad, but Apple readily swapped these out for free.

If your ever in a jiffy with a Mac, and it's in-warranty or not, I'd give Amsys.co.uk a shout. If you tell them Joel from Planet Audio sent you, you should get a bit further.. If you don't, do let me know who the person your dealing with is, and I'll have their boss slap them.

Got a MacBook Air in the office (it's pretty, not used for anything more than meetings and iTunes), girly has the MacBook (White - current model) and I have the MacBook Pro (new 15" in the office for company use, and the 17" (which is still current) for myself).. Also got an iMac 24" for home.

As said RDC is pretty good, never had to scream at it, and ARD is pretty stable from my use of it to mass-deploy/patch to 500+ Mac's.

I havn't quite got the hang of using the touchpad multi-touch swipes etc as part of my day to day just yet, more of a novelty for me still. Don't find it's a selling point either.

freethought · 5th December 2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andrew

freethought - Does Mail have decent integration for exchange servers? whilst yeah you can connect via imap, will it bring up the global address books.etc? as I was under the impression it couldn't.

No idea, I've never actually used it, I just know that it has it

IIRC, it uses IMAP for e-mail then OWA for the calender. Not sure if it can pull down the address book but I know there is a third part plug-in that syncs from Exchange to the system address book.
Snow Leopard should fix this as it is inheriting all of the Exchange compatibility improvements from the iPhone 2.x firmware.

FH - Tim · 5th December 2008

Well all this thread does is make me want it more, currently have a Rock laptop which has awful build quality and keyboard.

Looking to get one on a business lease but might end up just buying one myself if I'm not careful

Jeewhizz · 5th December 2008

I've got a 15" MBP, and love it. Does everything I need it to, and the trackpad is gorgeous. I only really use it when at meetings, or in the evenings in front of the tv.

During the day, I get to work on a Mac Pro with a nice big screen with plenty of RAM

And Mail should have better exchange support in OS X 10.6 whcih should be out in summer 09 I think...

luke · 6th December 2008

I had a 17" MacBook Pro that lasted me over 2 years, it's still working but started to have some odd gfx issues every so often, oh and the glass of water that got knocked onto it didn't do the keyboard any good!

Had a few issues with a battery bulging and a power supply melting, but every time Apple replaced everything, even though my warranty had expired.

A few weeks ago I received a fully loaded (apart from going SSH) 15" MacBook Pro to complement my new MacPro

I Like the new design, milled from a block of aluminium!
Screen, view angle kicks ass, colours a much nicer due to the glass, the gloss took me a while to adjust to.
Real big trackpad, uses the same multi-touch the iPhone uses.
The old screen hinge was crap, this ones much more solid.
No more lid catch! Though the old magnetic ones were kinda cool ;-)
Keyboard is similar to the newer Mac keyboards; low profile keys, very nice to type on I find. Oh and it no-longer touches the screen when you've got the lid closed!
Access to the HDD from the same panel as the battery, much easier then older MacBook Pro's!

I'm personally much happier working on a Mac or a Linux system then I am working on a Windows box.