How about we "quantify" this a little
I can't speak to much about this one. If I hold my ear RIGHT up to the vents in the hinge area, I hear a slight repeatative whining. I do have 8 servers in my home office, 2 of which on under my desk, another two on a TV stand to my left. Someone with some sound gear and this problem should try to read what the decibel levels are.
Again, I don't use APE. My hub is litterally 1' from my MBP, so its using ethernet. I can maybe do some testing with Wireless, if someone wants to compare. I know my wife's PB 15" had the same issues at one point, but it ended up being a setup issue and corrected itself.
I bought my MBP as primarily a desktop replacement. Since I had it, its been off only twice, and off power only 3 times, two of which were durring the battery burn-in period. I got a MBP instead of an iMac because I do have to travel some and like to take my dev box with me, just haven't yet. What we need to do to 'quantify' is setup a load test, with know parameters, that we can use to guage the battery life. Needs to be repeatable so we can get a good sampling.
This seems true on the PB also. To quantify, I took a digital probe thermometer, placed the prob against certain areas of the MBP (2.0gHz duo, 2gb ram, Serial # W8608, dual screen with Cinema 20"). Here are my readings:
- Key Rest (left side) - 102 degrees
- Just over F-keys - 111 degrees
- Bottom left front, just under key rest - 106 degrees
My wife's PB (PB 15", 1.67gHz G4, 2gb ram, exact same dual monitor setup) did the following:
- Key Rest (left side) - 97 degrees
- Just over F-keys - 111 degrees
- Bottom - 107
As a comparison, I took a reading from the bottom of my Dell D610, which was supplied by my employer. It has a 1.73gHz Pentium M and 1.24gb ram, using a similar dual screen setup (laptop + IBM P200 monitor) so the video card is working about as hard, and under neath read at 105 degrees. Now, the MBP has dual procs, plus they are clocked faster, and faster RAM and a faster Video card, and the under shell read only 1 degree hotter. I personally found that to be a fair trade off.
And, for the record, I believe ALL laptop dealers warn NOT to place their laptops directly on your lap. As stated, that why they call them 'portables' now. The last thing Dell wants is a class action from a bunch of impotent male techies.
For a $2,700 laptop (after tax in CA), you'd expect a lot more.
There are plenty of discounts out there. I got mine for $2299 + tax using a corporate discount, which I can actually get in the Apple store using my company badge. I know MOST colleges, as well as all k-12 students, get some pretty deep educational discounts. Also, I hear most teachers get a discount too. Odds are, you probably know SOMEONE that could have let you use their discount.
My friend is about to order his MBP, and I found out that I can "share" my corp perks with one other person (friend or family), so he is using it to get the same discount as I did. If you paid full retail, then that was your own fault.
Also, as another side note, this was the FIRST version of the MBP. Everyone who purchased early should note that NO ONE gets it perfect the first time, else there would never be revisions. With your money you also bought into Apple's reputation, one that I hear is pretty sound at making things right with their end-users. As such, have faith that if you present a case your product is not working to specs, that they will have the balls enough to fix it. BUT, they are not going to loose money sending out replacement MBPs if you cannot document that the majority are operating outside of the 'norm'.