Got my new MacBook - Impressions / "Acceptable" noise?

[Phil_S]

Yesterday my new MacBook (White / 2.0 / 1gb ram) finally showed up and it's a great piece of kit. My previous laptop was a G3 iBook and I'm blown away by how fast the MB is. Apps like Front Row seem like a lot of fun too, especially when after I figured out how to get at my external HD with it. The keyboard's going to take a little bit of getting used to but no real problem there.

Anyway, I know it's been done to death but I just wanted to get a little feedback about the noise issue. When I was setting everything up, downloading all the necessary updates etc the dreaded "moo" put in an appearance, not loud but definitely detectable. I did a restart after all the updates downloaded and the mooing didn't reappear (although I guess it's probably because I'm not trying to run so many things).

This morning I started off a couple of downloads using Azureus and started creating a video CD in Toast (mainly so I could see how fast it was compared with the iBook - I'm sad like that ) and the fans kicked in, not mooing but a constant hum. It wasn't by any means loud, but noticeable in a quiet room.

So... is it reasonable to expect the MB to remain quiet while doing the above, or is that the sort of work that you'd expect to make the fans start up? I'm bearing in mind that when I used Toast on my old iBook it would make the fans start and if anything that was even louder than the noises that the MB makes. And the less said about the racket my PC laptop used to make the better...

I'm wondering whether I'm being picky about the noises - whether or not they'd even be a concern if I hadn't read about them on the forums here - or if this is going to be a pain in the backside if I'm, say, doing some audio work...

 

[risc]

Good God man you have 1 of the fastest Intel notebook processors ever made in a notebook and you are complaining about fan noise? I'm sorry but this my notebook makes noise thing is getting a little old - they all do it - move on!

 

[netdog]

My MacBook is dead quiet.

 

[risc]

It has fans and a HDD and a optical drive so it's impossible for it to be silent, sure you might think it's quiet but silent is something you can't say about any modern computer.

 

[Phil_S]

Good God man you have 1 of the fastest Intel notebook processors ever made in a notebook and you are complaining about fan noise? I'm sorry but this my notebook makes noise thing is getting a little old - they all do it - move on!

Heh... yeah, I hear what you're saying. As I said, I can't help feeling that if I wasn't aware of all the posts about the mooing then I probably wouldn't even notice it!

 

[risc]

I hear that Phil_S a while ago I bought some Klipsch GMX speakers for my Power Mac G5 and I thought they sounded amazing, then someone told me about a hiss they have in the background. I listened but I couldn't hear it at all. Then 1 day I put my ear up to the speakers and there it was this tiny hiss in the background, I was so pissed I wanted to return them. I was talking to my manager about it and he said "So you want to return speakers that you think sound great, because you can hear a his only when you put your ear on the speaker?". I kind of felt like a dick after that.

While I'm sure people do have MacBooks with problems I think all of this my machine is too hot, it moos stuff has gotten out of hand. These machines run at such high speeds you really need to expect the fans to come on. Also based on what I've read a quick firmware update should fix the issue with the mooing which is nothing more than the fans going on and off and repeating. As for people like netdog saying their machine is silent obviously it isn't, but maybe they live in a completely different environment to you so the fans don't need to come on as much. My Power Mac G5 sounds like a jet plane in summer and now in winter all I can hear is the GPUs fan spinning and the HDD now and then.

Recently on IRC (#macosx on irc.freenode.net) a guy complained that his MacBook Pro was running hot. I asked him how hot he said 140'F I nearly burst out laughing when I did the conversion back to celcius and saw it was only 60'C. Damn when my MacBook Pro turns up next week if it runs at 60'C when using 100% of both cores I'll be totally happy!

 

[NATO]

Have you ever heard a generic PC Laptop? Every 5 minutes a ruddy great fan kicks in and whirrs for 20-30 seconds before spinning down. Loud enough that you can hear it from anywhere in the room. Do you hear people getting into a flap about it? No, because its par of the course for PC Laptops.

However, Apple designs a laptop which doesn't require such extreme cooling, apart from a very quiet fan which kicks in rarely, and only when required (not every 5 minutes) and people get into such a mess over it.

It's a Laptop. It needs cooled. If it isn't cooled it will overheat. The reason you hear all these other various noises is because the laptop is so silent in the first place. My girlfriend has a Compaq PC Laptop and it has fans spinning all the time, with a big fan kicking in when it really needs it. Thats loud enough to mask any beep/moo noise. My Powerbook in comparison is absolutely silent except for the odd noise to do with the HDD etc.

I propose that Apple update the firmware on all their new laptops to keep the fans spinning all the time to bring it into line with normal PC Laptops. Only then will people stop complaining about the noises their laptops make. While Apple design them to be super-quiet, any insignificant noise will be moaned about until it drives people like me mad.

There's also a thread about whether the MacBook emits a different noise when Bluetooth is turned off/on. The poster specifies that to notice the noise you must put your head really close to the laptop. I mean Jesus... get a grip! </rant>

 

[rob5]

My MacBook is dead quiet.

Same here - I was surprised at how cool it was after using it for 3 straight hours with an iLap. It was barely warm!

I love this thing.