new MacBook user-impressed

[cschmelz]

I've ALWAYS been a 'Pro' mac product user. My current desktop machine is an older but still great PowerMac G5 dual with 4gb of RAM and the Apple 24 inch screen (video/photo work) and my previous laptop was a Alumibook G4 at 1.67ghz. I found my old Powerbook to be getting too slow for what I wanted it to do and I'm not a patient man waiting for the spinning beach ball to go away. I had been waiting for the new MBP to come out w/ multitouch and was convinced that is what I wanted, but when the update came I and saw the black MBooks down to $1050 my wife was able to convince me to save the $1000 and get the MBook instead (hadn't really considered the MB previously as I don't care for the white casing and wasn't going to spend hundreds of dollars basically for the black casing.

I had heard a lot about how bad the keyboard was, how slow the video is, etc. so it was with some fear I clicked the order button on the apple refurb store and ordered my 2.2ghz blackbook.

I initlally thought, man, this thing isn't really much faster than my VERY old 2gb RAM 1.67 G4! Big delays in surfing, slow Flash video, etc. It took me a bit of time as an ALL PowerPC guy to realize quite a bit of my software hadn't been updated to intel specific/Universal Binary files so I assume I was over-utilizing the legacy Rosetta converter. Clearing out a few old Safari plugins and replacing others with UB/Intel versions fixed that issue.

The REAL change occured when I went from the woefully inadequate 1gb of ram to a full out 4gb. WOW! This machine is now as fast (or even faster) for every day tasks than my dual G5 PowerMac! What a difference for $95 from OWC!

I'm VERY pleased with my purchase (and savings of $1000 over a new MBP)

 

[DaBrain]

I've ALWAYS been a 'Pro' mac product user. My current desktop machine is an older but still great PowerMac G5 dual with 4gb of RAM and the Apple 24 inch screen (video/photo work) and my previous laptop was a Alumibook G4 at 1.67ghz. I found my old Powerbook to be getting too slow for what I wanted it to do and I'm not a patient man waiting for the spinning beach ball to go away. I had been waiting for the new MBP to come out w/ multitouch and was convinced that is what I wanted, but when the update came I and saw the black MBooks down to $1050 my wife was able to convince me to save the $1000 and get the MBook instead (hadn't really considered the MB previously as I don't care for the white casing and wasn't going to spend hundreds of dollars basically for the black casing.

I had heard a lot about how bad the keyboard was, how slow the video is, etc. so it was with some fear I clicked the order button on the apple refurb store and ordered my 2.2ghz blackbook.

I initlally thought, man, this thing isn't really much faster than my VERY old 2gb RAM 1.67 G4! Big delays in surfing, slow Flash video, etc. It took me a bit of time as an ALL PowerPC guy to realize quite a bit of my software hadn't been updated to intel specific/Universal Binary files so I assume I was over-utilizing the legacy Rosetta converter. Clearing out a few old Safari plugins and replacing others with UB/Intel versions fixed that issue.

The REAL change occured when I went from the woefully inadequate 1gb of ram to a full out 4gb. WOW! This machine is now as fast (or even faster) for every day tasks than my dual G5 PowerMac! What a difference for $95 from OWC!

I'm VERY pleased with my purchase (and savings of $1000 over a new MBP)

WTG Congrats! I just go my black refurb a few days ago and it came with 2 gig ram. I wonder how much dif for every day stuff adding another 2 gig would make?

IM very happy with mine also, Just curious what the difference would be like running 4 gig of RAM instead of 2 Gig? Anyone have any experience doing just that on a 2.2 gig intel macbook?

 

[pyr0sphere]

Check your Activity Monitor to see if you even need more RAM

Also check if your page out amount is high