Techgrasp Technology

Switching From a PC to a 17" MacBook Z0G5 128GB SSD

As of this writing, I've noticed that Amazon is mixing all MacBook Pro reviews together, regardless of the model you searched on to get here. This is for the Z0G5, which is really just the 2.66GHz MB604LL 17" with the 128GB Solid State Drive option. Although I have used Apple/Mac products over the years, this is the first time an Apple has been my number 1 computing device. I'm including details for those used to the PC environment, so those already familiar with Apple, please be patient, as I wanted to help weigh the pros and cons of switching from Windows. 

SUMMARY 
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This, quite simply, is the nicest computer I have ever owned or used since starting with them in 1979. It is not for everybody, if only because of price, but if there is something you are used to doing on Windows XP or Vista, this will probably do it, and do it faster and more reliably. 

GOOD 
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* Bootup/shutdown times - benchmarks are somewhat relative, but my 6 year old HP ze5400 P4, and 5 month old dv7-1130 core-duo, both will boot XP Pro to a usable state in just over 4 minutes, including effects of anti-virus software and initial browser launch. Using the same licensed copy of XP Pro for this MBP, it boots in an incredible 25 seconds, every time. This latter time is a full boot-up -- no hour glasses to wait through. Shutdowns average around 4 seconds on the MBP, compared to around 30 to 45 seconds on the above mentioned Windows laptops. You can also run Vista32/64, Linux, Unix, Sun and other OS using VMware Fusion, which runs within the Leopard OS -- this is absolutely terrific software, and if you set it to full screen, you will be hard pressed to tell if you are running a pure Windows OS, although Fusion will only devote one of the two Intel cores to Windows. This latter point is quite amazing, when you read about how fast Vista boots on other MBP's (see other Amazon reviews in April 2009). You can allocate the majority of the included 4GB of RAM and almost as much as the hard drive/SSD to these guest OS' as you want. For just Leopard, the native OS, boot and shutdown times are comparable, and of course, that's for just that OS -- it has nothing to do with Fusion or guest OS's. 

* Screen - having just come from a near-new HP dv7-1130us, which also has a glossy 17" screen, well, there is simply no comparison. I'm not being an "Apple snob" here. The MBP offers a much sharper and more colorful image. Personally, the occasional glare is a worthwhile trade-off for the image quality, but I spent almost 2 hours in a local Apple store comparing the glossy vs. anti-glare side-by-side, and I almost picked the anti-glare, extra $[...] cost notwithstanding. Unless you are really concerned about the final few pixels of 130dpi resolution which the glossy screen seems to bring out, or the pop-out color of the glossy, the anti-glare is just as good, and almost fully eliminates any trace of glare. I could have been happy with either. Also, when running XP in VMware Fusion, you can set the screen resolution to a ridiculous 5210 x 3200 ! (not native of course, but the even the 1920x1200 is better than any WSXGA+ screen I'm aware of) 

* Battery power - I've only run on battery for 4 hours at a time, but I would estimate usable power for up to 6 hours, with occasional wifi use and uninterrupted word processing. I do think it's POSSIBLE to get the 8 hr time, particularly if you get the flash hard drive and 2.66GHz processor, but you have to allow all power saving options, reduce screen brightness to absolute minimum, etc, so that practically, this is just a laboratory spec. However, I have never owned a laptop that did better than 3 hours -- so this doubled that. 

* Keyboard - I have come to really like the keyboard in only two weeks, although I do miss having a backspace key. Apple die-hards may know something I don't, but without backspace or an 'end' key, I find I am re-positioning the cursor a lot. However, the track pad almost compensates for this. When set for single-tap, this is the best track pad I've ever used. I never accidentally select or click items anymore. Right click is done with two-fingers, and is less effort than actual 'right-clicking'. Windows hotkeys, such as alt-tab, ctrl c, ctrl v, etc. work when running XP. I dislike the sharp edge towards the front of the laptop, and I'm a little surprised that Apple picked form over razor-blade-function by not beveling this. But, this thing is a MacBook Air wannabe - it is very thin, and the pressure on the wrists still isn't as bad as other laptops I have used. Too bad they didn't round it like the bottom edge. 

* SSD speed and response - currently, going to the Solid State Drive (NAND flash memory) is a $[...] premium to a 7200RPM hard drive, and that only gets you 128GB, of which you will have around 93 usable GB after getting your Mac with Leopard, iLife (included) and in my case, iWork loaded on it. I keep photos and large files on a couple of external HDD's, and use an online backup service for really important business files, so trading off speed to lower capacity was very worthwhile. In fact, I'm getting in the bad habit of not shutting down, but just putting the MBP to sleep and stuffing it in my bag while it's saving files -- it doesn't matter with SSD. I've read about benchmarking SSD to HDD, small files vs big files, etc, etc. Frankly, it was all meaningless once using it for real. It's expensive now, but in 5 years, we will all be using SSD. 

* iWork and TextEdit - these will open .doc, .xls, .xlsx, etc. You may not be able to edit all the features of Windows productivity software using Apple's own versions on their own, but you can still do many things with iWork, and you can always view any Microsoft-format files. I was stunned at some of iWork's templates in Pages and Numbers. 

* You can share files between the Leopard and Windows OS (or any other guest OS) using shared folders. You can also select to share files between different users or not. This reminded me of using LAN shares. 

* Blue screen? What's that?? Cheekiness aside, I can lock a Mac if I really try, but I have not done so yet on this or it's guest XP Pro OS. Just a pleasure to use. 

NOT AS GOOD 
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* 2.66GHz vs 2.93GHz for an extra $[...] - I'm being a little less than objective here, but looking at bench marks for the MacPro desktop, and talking with Apple Genius reps, I concluded the 2.93GHz processor only adds about 5 to 7% more usable processing power. Feel free to offer your opinion. 

* Occasional lag - this has happened 3 times in two weeks - I think this is due to the guest OS and tear-down of memory ranges. It's not that obtrusive, but after getting used to the normal speed of the laptop, it's a bit of a surprise when it does happen. 

* Trash bin - no restore. I have researched this and as incredible as it will sound to Windows users, you must manually restore unintended deletions yourself to whatever folder it came from -- not very helpful if you were typing/swiping quickly and didn't see where you unintentionally deleted something, or you are unfamiliar with Mac directory trees. I have read some borderline-snob opinions about this, but it's a serious oversight that should not be joked about. Most of us can identify with your hands tiring and inadvertently dragging a file or folder to the Trash. Or sometimes small creatures known as children get a-hold of your treasured, $[...] device and use it as a Fisher-Price xylophone set. I've been around some very brainy, Product Development Engineering-Fellow-types for years, and they are sometimes guilty of convincing themselves that removing features like this are explainable, acceptable, and only weak or stupid people would ever complain. I guess I'm weak and stupid. Frankly, I don't care. Stupid people still seem to have a lot of money, (more than average, I have observed) so unless Apple likes perpetual 12% market-share, they should and will have to match certain, select attributes offered by competitors. Again, if I'm wrong, I'd welcome being set straight on the issue. 

* Caution: Slippery When Dry - dry hands may not always grasp the super clean, smooth aluminum case, such as when going through airport X-ray security with hundreds of people jostling you. I purchased the 3 year warranty because of this (although damage in such circumstances still may not be covered). 

* Warranty - at $[...], it's a little expensive. I didn't know this when purchasing, but if you buy a 24" monitor with the MBP on the same invoice, then the warranty also covers the monitor. Except that, by definition, if you don't buy a monitor, then you're overpaying for a warranty that was priced to include one. 

* You may need new hardware and/or software - much of it which is not cheap. One reason why VMware Fusion is so wonderful is you can load Window-based apps like Office and use your existing license. Apple currently throws in iLife, and if using only Leopard, you don't typically need anti-virus software. Some Apple hardware, like RAM, is designed only for Apple computers and does cost more -- even if you buy it from a third-party retailer. 

* ExpressCard 34 port - I really will need an eSATA port. Unfortunately, reading some Apple reviews indicate that many commonly-available Express34 eSATA adapter drivers currently do not work reliably with the MBP. I normally don't put too much into a few bad reviews here and there, but this does seem to be a genuine problem with the MBP as of late April 2009. Driver updates may correct. 

* Price - it has to be said: This is still just a computer. Once you add truly comparable hardware, the price difference is not quite as disparate as many believe...perhaps $[...] for a premium, all-flash, all-day-battery Windows laptop to a $[...] MBP. It's easy to fall into a trap of just counting USB ports, of how much DDR3 RAM you get, but I'm also referring to native screen resolution for a portable device, or color balance, stability, security vulnerability, etc. If the MBP advantages are worth it to you, chances are you already know. I just broke the TFT display on my 5 month old HP dv7-1130us laptop, which also had a dual-core, 4GB DDR3 RAM, etc., which lead to this MBP purchase, but believe me -- and I'm not trying to jump onto an anti-Vista kick here -- the PC was painful to use. Slow, alarmingly buggy, and poor legacy support. Even after downgrading it to XP and upgrading to a 7200RPM HDD, performance was still slow slow - slower than an old single core, P4 with 1GB DDR RAM. Specs aren't going to show you how fast this MBP boots. 

SOME FINAL THOUGHTS 
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Use the MacBook Pro a little bit, and it grows on you all the more. It seems different, but familiar hot keys, print screen, display and wifi settings, etc. are all still there. 

Apple still reminds me of how computers used to be in the 1980's -- things are already laid-out for you, and you do it the Apple way, and if you don't like it, get used to it. PC, which really was a semi-open standard that began with Microsoft OS running of IBM PC's and PC clones, could be configured many ways. Like so many things, what makes it open also makes it complicated, with clashing interpretations of standards. Testing keeps systems reliable, but it is always the most expensive part of developing anything (I know, I can thank my career for it). As a result, testing is usually where cost-cutting must be performed. Next time you curse Vista, remember, Microsoft engineers cannot solve issues due to third-party designers. They will always be in reactive mode because Windows is relatively open. 

Apple chose to make the day-to-day settings for you, and telling many peripheral designers "here's how your printer WILL talk to our computers", etc. It's potentially less flexible, and will slow third-party software and hardware development because it is more expensive to design and test with Apple. Ironically, this is disorienting to us Windows users. We are so used to controlling and setting everything, that an Apple computer seems too simple, and even that control is lost. This really isn't the case though. Virtually everything you can set in Windows can be manually set in a Mac. But what I've found over the last 2 weeks is, why would you want to keep adjusting anymore? I know it's their current slogan, so apologies, but the Apple really "just works". There's no need to get into setup menus -- set once and forget. 

The last time I used iMac G3's or the original MacIntosh, I enjoyed them and remembered a few of my former PC-peers who said they would never switch back to a PC. I'm not quite sure I'm ready to say that yet, but the MacBook Pro 17" is the first Apple computer I'm willing to test that notion on. 

UPDATE: Sept 15, 2009 
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This is just a fantastic computer. This is what impresses me almost daily: 

* Speed. Same boot-up/turn-off times. It does not gradually slow down with use like Windows. Leopard and now Snow Leopard respond very fast. Running XP in the virtual is awesome because I almost never shut-down....I just suspend it. In doing so, XP basically restarts in seconds. 

* Display -- Love using screen capture (command, shift, 4) -- much better than Print Screen. 

* RapidWeaver, Pages, Numbers - awesome templates. Nice alternatives to the familiar ones we've seen for 10 years. 

* Ease of updates - fast, automatic and they do not bog machine down while loading. They also are not co-dependent or prerequisite. They just all download and install at once. 

* Battery life. On just Leopard, 1/2 brightness screen, working on say a website while listening to iTunes, I get an honest 6 hours. You probably could get 8 hours as I once got 7, but that's the dimmest setting and running only 1 app. Still, I never take my adapter for the day. The batteries outlast me. 

* Time machine is actually pretty cool. I quite a back-up hound, and had just done what I always did with manual dragging of files to an external drive but TM works very well. 

Occasionally, there are problems, though in all honesty they do not cause much grief...but in the interest of disclosure, here's what I've found: 

* About 1 or 2 times per month, I have to Force Quit something. Problem is usually seems due to a 3rd party driver or app. 

* Creating a new folder places it at the root of the directory tree, not in a subfolder you've highlighted. 

* No FW400 port. I'm not sure...maybe there's an FW800-to-400 adapter. But I could have used this a few times now. 

* Could not find a way to reverse the data series on a Numbers graph. Geniuses at Mac store couldn't figure it out either. There might be a way (in fact, it's there buy greyed-out...why??). 

* I dont' like iTunes lack of Realplayer-format support like .ra and .rmj, and greatly wish I could just see a directory tree of songs that I can shift-right-click and select. 

I don't know how Windows 7 will compare yet. While it's still important for me to have the legacy support of XP on VM Fusion, I find that I'm using it less and less, almost completely relying on speedy Snow Leopard, Numbers, Word, TextEdit and Preview. Dialog boxes are also rare (mercifully). If you are really watching money (which would include 99% of us), obviously you'll have to wonder about those $[...] HP laptop blowouts you see. However, after just playing around with the dv7 or my friend's HP d8000, I would really recommend you try a small MBP 13.3 or 15" and at least compare, although it still does take time to learn certain keystrokes and features if you're only a Windows person. Personally, though, I'm hooked. I don't think I could go back to a plastic, bendable and slow laptop again.