So I did it. I picked up my Christmas present a few days early: A MacBook Pro core 2 duo 2.33 15" (non-glossy). I walked in with the thought of buying the $1100 or
maybe $1400 MacBook but upsold myself several times based on the core 2 pro's X1600 video and screen size. That meant Apple memory and big HD at a premium price. Ouch. Sure, it is beautiful. Now to see if I can haul it around without the paranoia!
My naive little plan was to run Parallels and duplicate my cheapo wintel box while I migrate a few functions to Mac. Much of this is new again. I did near 20yrs of Apple hw/sw development in a previous life but I've been *nix and Windows since. It's not nice to be a noob, hence the "Love" request.
I'm noticing a few things. Some I've heard about, some I just blindly ignored in a buying frenzy. Pardon my stream-of-consciousness dump. It's still yesterday. Thoughts are welcome:
The HEAT. I've been monitoring temps with Marcel Bresink's Temperature Monitor and my lap. I kicked up the fans to a min of 4000rpm with smcFanControl. That helps but the processor still creeps near 50c on my lap doing basic surfing and typing. (low 40s c "idling" on a desk.) I'm tempted to crack it open and check if the thermal compound mania is true.
No TV out: Seems silly. It's common on wintel laptops, even cheap ones with integrated video. Maybe the $50 portable dvd players will save me from my moldy VGA->Svid adapters.
It's fast. Nice. Even XPPro in Parallels blows away my old HP laptop.
Very sexy case. Thin but very strong. It's almost too nice to haul around.
No card reader. Not even PCMCIA/Cardbus: Now I either pony up for several ExpressCard adapters that hang out the side or go back to USB adapters.
Expresscard may be more powerful but this is an annoying compromise.
It's nice to see Apple add FW800 again, but I think they missed an opportunity to lead toward laptop ESATA. For external drives, everything else is slow.
The viewer app as DVD player: Simple, straightforward, but am I missing more scaling options? It seems to be limiting the full screen view to an even zoom ratio which doesn't use the entire screen width or height. (bars on all 4 sides).
I'll stop now and grab some sleep. Like I said, bring it on. Thoughts, opinions, horoscopes, paranormal encounters... just no religious wars.