A look at the MacBook Pro
I received my new 2.0 GHz MacBook Pro last Friday as a replacement for my 1.5 GHz 15″ PowerBook G4. I purchased the MacBook Pro from PowerMax with a trade-in of my 15″ PowerBook G4, which itself was purchased by trading my 12″ PowerBook G4. I highly recommend PowerMax. You may be able to get more by selling your old Macs at eBay, but their trade-ins are a lot less hassle.
I haven’t seen any of the much-discussed problems with it. The MacBook Pro is absolutely silent (except the rare occasions when the fan runs) with none of the infamous “whine”. The fan itself is very quiet. The Airport reception is better than the PowerBook - it never goes below 4 bars when I’m in the opposite end of my apartment from the access point. The PowerBook sometimes went down to 2 or 3.
The first time I unplugged the power cord with the battery fully charged, my MacBook Pro went to sleep immediately, but that hasn’t happened since I recalibrated the batteery by letting it run down completely and fully charging it.
I was concerned that PhotoShop CS2 would be slow, but I found that it wasn’t much slower than it was on my old PowerBook G4.
The first thing I noticed was that the box is about half the thickness of the PowerBook G4’s box.
The MacBook Pro itself is only slightly thinner than the PowerBook G4.
If your PowerBook is more than a year old, the MacBook Pro is a nice upgrade. Non-native software isn’t any slower than it was on the 1.5 GHz PowerBook G4.
