My New Macbook

My new Macbook arrived yesterday, and I have a few first impressions I thought I'd share.

First, for the propeller heads, I got the white Macbook with the 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo Intel processor, 1GB of RAM, 80GB hard drive - in other words, I took all the default options. ALso comes with built in iSight camera, Bluetooth, wireless, firewire, USB, and a DVD burner. Full specs at the Apple site.

Second, I bought a Macbook both to complement my iMac and to have available to take with me wherever I go so I can work on my thesis papers. It will also allow me to surf the internet when my wife is using the iMac.

I would have bought a refurbished one because they're cheaper, but since none were available when I ordered, I used my student discount (there are some perks to being a grad student).

In strictly aesthetic terms, the laptop is very attractive. The white housing is made of a slightly opalescent hard plastic that looks like it will be quite durable. The unit is very light (a bonus for carrying around), and small - less than an inch thick! The 13.3" screen doesn't feel small and looks great.

One of the things Apple does well is think about what their end users need and therefore they put a lot of effort into design. The keyboard has a really nice tactile feel to it, and the touchpad is pretty nice although I prefer using an external mouse. Speaking of mice, Apple still uses the single button mouse concept in its design, so the touchpad only has a single button. Since I use a two button scroll-wheel mouse on the iMac, I'll be using one with the laptop whenever reasonable.

A cute and useful design feature is that the power cord connects with a magnetic clip - if the power cord is tripped over, it'll merely pull off without either destroying the power connection or hauling the laptop to the floor. Another nice touch is that there's an AC extension cord for the power adapter, although it requires pulling out the flip down power plug, which I could see losing.

The pleasant surprise came when I turned the laptop on. During the inital "welcome to your new Mac" process, it asked me if I had and existing Mac and if so if I wanted to synch it up with my current one. Well, yeah!

A few minutes later, after borrowing my existing iSight's firewire cable, my Macbook was busily transferring everything over from my iMac - applications, user accounts, music, photos, etc. This is the point where I discovered that I should have spent the extra money on a slightly larger hard drive. Once the initial transfer was complete about two hours later, I had to do some judicious file editing and another synch to get the rest of my applications over. On the other hand, there was a lot of data transferred over that I just don't need on my laptop! In the end, I have about 10G usable left on my 80G drive.

However, since the laptop was now synched and everything was transferred over, it behaves exactly like my desktop does and I didn't have to set up any preferences since that work was done a long time ago on the iMac.

On the whole, I'm very pleased with my purchase, and I think I'll be getting a lot of mileage out of the new laptop. All I need now is for the iSkin laptop case to arrive (UPS says tomorrow).