Macbook buy now or wait till rev B?

[icloud]

Just wondering what peoples feelings are on the macbook, and whether it is worth buying it now, since the only thing stopping me is the frightening news im hearing about noise, the "moo", whining...

to be fair I am in a position where i could wait until the next rev, but I do have some advantage with the upcoming "back to school" promotion, the university should cut me a good discount on it...

what are your thoughts and experiences?

 

[shadowmoses]

The rev.b's are probably nearly a year away. If you need a MB now go on and get it they are amazing machines, and I wouldnt worry about the noises etc, they seem to be isolated cases if you get a dud return it and get a fresh one.......

SHadoW

 

[icloud]

isolated cases? that good to hear


how about heat...unbearable?

I know my powerbook can give me a nice tan if i keep it on my lap for too long

 

[shadowmoses]

isolated cases? that good to hear


how about heat...unbearable?

I know my powerbook can give me a nice tan if i keep it on my lap for too long

The whole heat issue is BS, I have tested many MB's in the apple store regents street where they are on 24/7 and none seemed any hotter than any standard laptop.....

SHadoW

 

[icloud]

Anyone else with personal experiences can give me some tips on this one?

btw, thank you shadowmoses

 

[Mob]

Whats Rev. B?

 

[sgd88]

Rev B is the second release in the macbook series.

As for should you buy now etc. well I think you should. I am writing on a macbook now and have just turned off iTunes to listen for some of these sounds. I can't hear a thing. As for heat... yes it does get hot. But it only gets hot in the one corner and it is not unbearable.

Consider everything else though. The glossy screen is EXCELLENT. The iSight is brilliant. The speed is good, and with just 512 MB of RAM I am not really having any problems.

 

[icloud]

Whats Rev. B?

The second revision...or "upgrade"

 

[plinden]

My wife's had one since Monday, ordered BTO from the Apple online store. But I've probably played ... I mean worked ... on it as much as she has.

It's warm but not unbearably so (I probably wouldn't use it on my lap wearing shorts, but there's no danger of burns). CoreDuoTemp showed the CPU temperature in use to be 60-64˚C. This is hot compared to my iMac (never more than 35˚C) but that doesn't make the case unbearably hot. Some people have reported that the wrist area is too hot, but this MB is fine - the wrist area temperature is barely above that of the case when the MB is off.

In comparison my Dell D810 really is unbearably hot (and it's 1.5" think and the fans are on all the time and it whines)

The MacBook doesn't whine or moo, but the power supply did whine while charging after calibrating the battery. But I haven't heard any noises since then.

Buld quality is good, everything fits together well, no gaps, no dead pixels.

People have said it's heavy, and it is I suppose, but I think it feels solid rather than heavy. My Dell is heavier (because it's a 15" screen and 1.5" thick and ... well ... a Dell) but feels less dense and plasticky, even though the MB is also plastic. It's kind of like the feeling of an iPod compared to a Dell DJ.

However, I'd like to point out that I've always been lucky with technology. In 25+ years of using computers, I've never had bad RAM or a hard drive failure on any computer, from Apple or any other company, or any loss due to any other kind of hardware failure.

 

[gloss]

Had mine since release day.

Thoughts:

Build quality. Very good. The machine feels completely solid. In comparison, the Dells and Compaqs we have sitting around the office seem to be comprised of flimsy plastic and empty space.

Awesome screen. Did a manual calibration and it's very pretty. Glare is no worse than what I'm used to from my CRT at home.

Keyboard. Awesome. Feels surprisingly nice to type on, especially given the fuss everyone's made about it. Good feedback, good spacing. Am a little concerned about getting gunk under the keys, but all things considered the risk isn't much higher than with a standard notebook keyboard.

Very quick, both in MacOS and Windows.

Get more RAM. I haven't used the machine with 512 but it flies with 2GB.

Heat. It gets warm. Not bake-your-nads warm, but okay-I'm-starting-to-sweat-a-little warm. Haven't had any incidents of egg-fry level heat, as some people reported with the MacBook Pros. I watched two 45 minute episodes of House, reclined with the notebook on my lap, and was never uncomfortable. Might be considered pleasant come winter.

Weight. It's small, but it's dense. Weighs more than you would expect (to the point that the first thing everyone at work said when they picked it up was 'Whoa. It's heavy.'). That said, it's pretty light in absolute terms.

Sound. Speakers sound good, but the volume level sucks. Bring headphones.

Haven't really encountered any major problems with it. Had some trouble seeing my PC at home over the wireless network, but it turned out that was because I wasn't sharing the HD.

Once a couple of days ago my friend put it back into its (thick, insulated) sleeve before it had shut down. Something went wrong and the machine kept running as if it were open. When I pulled it out two hours later it was HOT. Like, fans blowing, processor whining, MBP-esque hot. Plugged it into the wall and let it cool off overnight and it was back to normal the next morning. Still haven't figured out what happened there.

Anyway, happy owner. I'd recommend getting AppleCare if you have any Rev A concerns.

 

[wako]

The whole heat issue is BS, I have tested many MB's in the apple store regents street where they are on 24/7 and none seemed any hotter than any standard laptop.....

SHadoW

i dont find it as BS...


I went to the bethesda one in montgomery mall, and tried three different ones, two black, one white. Turned on 8 programs one after another and waited 5 minutes after it was able to have them all fully launched, touched the bottom and was burned.

 

[celebrian23]

Like stated, rev. B will not be out for quite a very long time. The problems with it are far more isolated than with the MBP. You have to consider a machine running all day, with people probably testing its capabilities is probably going to be much hotter than it's typical use.

 

[faintember]

i dont find it as BS...
I went to the bethesda one in montgomery mall, and tried three different ones, two black, one white. Turned on 8 programs one after another and waited 5 minutes after it was able to have them all fully launched, touched the bottom and was burned.

Can i call BS on this? Sure i can. For it to "burn" you the surface temp of the MB would have to be above 140° F, i highly doubt that was the case. If you were burned, i want pics. I am tired of false claims about MBs burning people.

As far as turning on 8 programs at once, come on...who does that in real life? Ok let me do it now....(opens itunes, ical, mail, adobe reader, idvd, imovie hd, iweb, microsoft word and excel, and seashore). That is 10 programs, 3 of which are PPC programs. Total time to open them all? Maybe 35-45 seconds. Its hard to time such when you have to keep clicking back on the applications folder in order to open a new program. That said i do have 2GB of RAM, but with all of those applications open, i still had 1.2GB RAM free.

In your defense, you do realize that the MB in the store have been tinkered on by every Tom, Dick and Harriet that walks in the door. Also were you clicking on all PPC apps or UB apps? I just find the "8 programs" comment to be a bit far fetched considering my experience with my MB, my experience with the other MBs in the apple store and other MR members reviews of the MB.

To the OP: The current MB is a great machine, so go buy one if you have the money. It is the best hardware investment that i have ever made since switching to Macs.

 

[Zman5225]

i dont find it as BS...


I went to the bethesda one in montgomery mall, and tried three different ones, two black, one white. Turned on 8 programs one after another and waited 5 minutes after it was able to have them all fully launched, touched the bottom and was burned.

i'm going to call BS on you as well. I was at the Apple store and I played with 3 macbooks, opened up 10 programs on each, and waited no more then 1 minture for all 10 to open up on the 2 that had 1gb of ram on it, and the one with 512mb of ram on it took probably 2 mins AT THE MOST. As for heat, it was slightly warm, but not OH MY GOD to the touch like you're claiming. I mean come on burned?

I did the 10 program test on purpose because I was testing out the core duo vs my last gen iBook.

 

[wako]

Can i call BS on this? Sure i can. For it to "burn" you the surface temp of the MB would have to be above 140° F, i highly doubt that was the case. If you were burned, i want pics. I am tired of false claims about MBs burning people.

You are absolutely right, 140 will definately burn you and it needs to be 140 and up. If you are saying the computer cant even reach 140 Fahrenheit, you are VERY mistaken. Even my former 12'' PB can reach 60 Centigrade easily. You seem to have been on this forum for quite a bit and you seen quite a bit of people fuss over their laptops being at 50 centigrade.

So will it burn? Yep


Now the reason why I chose 8 programs is because I wanted to simulate the CPU being stressed and I wanted it to simulate it being stressed for quite sometime. If someone decides to use it as a movie editor or something CPU intensive for the 5 minutes, which Im sure you can all agree opening them successively does stress the CPU, they are able to know about how hot it is.

 

[swingerofbirch]

I had been waiting to buy a MacBook to replace my VERY noisy eMac and my eMachines tower I use for one Windows app. I wasn't expecting the MacBook to come out so soon, so I don't have the pocket change to buy one. So I figure I'll keep saving and buy a Macbook when it's been upgraded and comes with Leoopard--anyone know when that is? I know WWDC is this summer, but is that the preview only?

 

[faintember]

So will it burn? Yep

Once again, proof. If i make a claim, i try to prove it. A claim such as being burned by a MB needs proof. I am not so much directly attacking you, but the numerous people that have been "burned" out there. I want a pic, or a IR temp reading of the computer until I, or anyone else will believe such a claim. Feel free to prove me wrong with sufficient proof.

As far as CPU intensive tasks, i loaded up Max/MSP (audio programming language) and one of the programs i built in it, that runs at 80% of my CPU on my TiPB. Under emulation on my MB the CPU load was 75%, not bad considering the nature of what the program does, and how well rosetta was emulating it. I ran it for about 15 mins, at which point the MB was hot, but hot enough to burn someone? Nope.

To attempt to get back on topic, i havent noticed any mooing from mine, but it does whine (only audible when all is silent and the CPU is under a very low load (2%-4%)). As far as BTS specials, i somewhat doubt there will be any on the new computers, unless it is a Buy a MB/MBP get a shuffle free, or the like. This sounds feasible as the shuffle probably wont be around much longer (replaced by the nano?).

 

[wako]

Once again, proof. If i make a claim, i try to prove it. A claim such as being burned by a MB needs proof. I am not so much directly attacking you, but the numerous people that have been "burned" out there. I want a pic, or a IR temp reading of the computer until I, or anyone else will believe such a claim. Feel free to prove me wrong with sufficient proof.

I hope you realize that 140 degree Fahrenheit is 60 degrees Centigrade... the temperature you claimed (and alot of other precautionary things about burning) that will burn someone.

If you honestly do not think and need proof that a computer is unable to reach 60 degrees centigrade, you obviously have not checked your computers temperature during moderate use. I would advise you checking out iStat Pro. Although of course software temperature readings is never as accurate as sticking a thermometer down your system, it still gives you an idea of how hot it is.

 

[faintember]

<singing> ***Thats internal temperature....Thats internal temperature****</singing>
Check out this thread....and these pictures..

Those numbers are in fahrenheit...under 100% CPU load and after running in that state....

BTW, istatpro does not work on the MBP or the MB without a kernel extension...

 

[Philberttheduck]

Holy Schnaps!!!!!

to answer the thread's question.. GET IT NOW. A year's not worth the wait.

 

[wako]

did you actually allow it to run at 100% CPU load for more than a few seconds? Maybe like 5 minutes at the very least? Because my former 12'' 1.5ghz PB can definately reach far beyond 46 degrees Centigrade.... that was only at its idle temperature. On full load it reaches to 60 after actually using it for sometime.

 

[faintember]

Read the link that was in my previous post. It is not my MBP, or my pictures...but an outside source that is not partial to either you or I.

To test out the result of replacing the Thermal Paste, Greg and I ran both of our laptops at max CPU for a while. It's actually quite easy to do. You just need to fire up two terminal windows and execute the following in each:

$ yes > /dev/null

There are probably better ways to load up the CPU, but this did the trick for both of our machines. More importantly, we were treating both machines in the same way so that we could make an apple-to-apple comparison, so to speak.

After heating up the systems, we used a fancy Fluke IR thermometer to take readings from all over both systems. All of the readings told us the same thing: my modified laptop was running a degree or two cooler than Greg's unmodified version. Here are some pretty typical readings taken from exactly the same location on the bottom of each machine

 

[dops7107]

As ever, it depends on need. I want a Macbook, but mostly for gadget factor and a desire for more speed. i certainly don't need it, though. So I intend to wait until OS X 10.5 comes out at the very least, because I don't want to have to buy a new OS again shortly after buying a computer. And if you can wait until Rev B then all the better, but that's a never-ending cycle. Want it and need it? Don't hesitate and get it. But I'd be interested to hear how much you "need" the black version!

 

[Ryan5505]

Over heating

I to agree that none of the macs can actually burn you. In my attached picture I have 11 programs running while I am laying in bed with the computer on the blanket. This is a powerbook 1.5 with 512MB of Ram. you will see the hottest temp after 15 minutes is 129 degrees on the istat nano and the istat pro is totally off.

And how is a MB going to burn you through a PLASTIC CASE? It would probably melt or deform at constant high temps.

 

[wako]

I did not read that article at first, but after reading it, it also points out it uses the latest firmware update which is supposedly able to fix the heating issue in the system.

Also despite that one review, I think it is still worthy to note that there are credible sites, including the most known ones arstechnica and notebook reviews have had to deal with overheating laptops.

In any case, Ill be going to the mac store in the next few days, I'll bring my own thermometer.


And ryan, please think through that one again. If plastic can sustain boiling temperatures, how will it melt at 140 degrees fahrenheit?