MAC Book Pro

[rockymtnhigh]

Nice review.

I too have become completely accustomed to gestures. I had to help setup a colleague's new windows machine today and the track pad was driving me nuts.

I still have a PC keyboard (Microsoft Natural Keyboard) as my external keyboard for my mbp at work; its driving me nuts because somehow in just two weeks I have gotten used to command being the key instead of control key.

 

[rockymtnhigh]

Hey, does anybody use MacKeeper? I keep seeing reviews and ads for it, and it looks like the Mac version of Norton Utilities, but its unclear to me whether it is necessary. Do you use it?

 

[Foxbat]

Hey, does anybody use MacKeeper? I keep seeing reviews and ads for it, and it looks like the Mac version of Norton Utilities, but its unclear to me whether it is necessary. Do you use it?

I haven't any experience with it, sorry. I'd check out macworld.com and see what they have to say.

When I got my Mac Pro, I signed up for the "Welcome to Mac" year's worth of Macworld magazine. I've kept up on the subscription over the years just for the feature articles reviewing software suites and their helpful hints. I'm sure they have an iPad app...

Of course, with so many new Macs out there, and most of them without any kind of malware protection, the Black Hats are now targeting the Mac. The question comes up about what antivirus you should have. I loaded Sophos on the family Mac Mini as it was free and I don't trust my son's judgement as to what he clicks on. My biggest gripe is it doesn't do a weekly full scan unless you script something yourself. Other than that, it works quietly in the background and is very unobtrusive.

 

[rockymtnhigh]

Thanks Roland.

I have the Macworld app on my iPad; its ok as an app, not great, but I have been getting lots of info from macrumors.com

I have MacAfee Security on my MBP, but am not really certain what it does, if anything. i'l check out Sophos.

 

[rockymtnhigh]

I was able to ign up for a digital subscription of am world, and can read the magazine full screen on the iPad, I think it will be a good read as I try to learn more about this world I have dove into head first,

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[Ilya]

I have installed Symantec (once I realized that our Endpoint Protection subscription covers Mac too).

 

[rockymtnhigh]

Not mac book pro topic persay, but today when my wife was in the Apple store with me in the Chicago burbs today, I showed her the mac book air -- and she got very excited by the prospect of a laptop that light for her business. I think it could easily be in her future in the next six months. She DOES NOT need the full power of a mbp, and the air does have that really nice form factor. I just wish it was a bit less costly.

 

[dangue]

Not mac book pro topic persay, but today when my wife was in the Apple store with me in the Chicago burbs today, I showed her the mac book air -- and she got very excited by the prospect of a laptop that light for her business. I think it could easily be in her future in the next six months. She DOES NOT need the full power of a mbp, and the air does have that really nice form factor. I just wish it was a bit less costly.

Supposedly, new models will be introduced this month. That being the case, last year's model will likely be discounted to get rid of inventory.

Sent from my iPhone using SatelliteGuys

 

[rockymtnhigh]

Supposedly, new models will be introduced this month. That being the case, last year's model will likely be discounted to get rid of inventory.

Sent from my iPhone using SatelliteGuys

No immediate plans, but I knew there would be new models coming out, and while the $100 off on an older one would be nice, I'd probably go with the new one to give her machine as much power as possible.

The rumor-mill now is that the new mba's will wait until AFTER Lion is introduced; as Apple wants to ship them with the new OS; which makes sense to me.

The more I think about it, the more I think this would be very good for my wife's business; except for finding a way to be able to use her database (a proprietary program) on both a laptop and her desktop.

 

[Ilya]

Not mac book pro topic persay, but today when my wife was in the Apple store with me in the Chicago burbs today, I showed her the mac book air -- and she got very excited by the prospect of a laptop that light for her business. I think it could easily be in her future in the next six months. She DOES NOT need the full power of a mbp, and the air does have that really nice form factor. I just wish it was a bit less costly.

MacBook Air does look sexy! I was tempted initially, but then decided to go with the more practical MacBook Pro.
Limited features and most importantly, not being able to upgrade anything - made it a no-go for me.
Nice form factor though. Almost like a netbook, but with a power of a notebook.
The price is too high though (as everything Apple). You pay for the cool factor!

 

[rockymtnhigh]

MacBook Air does look sexy! I was tempted initially, but then decided to go with the more practical MacBook Pro.
Limited features and most importantly, not being able to upgrade anything - made it a no-go for me.
Nice form factor though. Almost like a netbook, but with a power of a notebook.
The price is too high though (as everything Apple). You pay for the cool factor!

You pay for the cool factor, the hardware, and the magic. (And yes, I have eaten of the forbidden fruit)

I agree though, FOR ME, it is not worth it, but for my wife, it could be a very useful machine. But she has made it clear she does not want to go through a Mac "learning curve" right now.

 

[rockymtnhigh]

Was reading a story about the cost of thunderbolt cables (for non-existent devices!) and realized that the thunderbolt port IS the same as the display port, meaning you can't use a thunderbolt device with an external monitor, unless there is some sort of daisy chaining.

 

[berck]

If you need to make modifications to the hardware, I would suggest ifixit site. They give step by step instructions and tell you all the tools needed to perform the operation.

 

[Ilya]

you can't use a thunderbolt device with an external monitor, unless there is some sort of daisy chaining.

Yes, as I understand, you can daisy-chain up to 6 thunderbolt devices. And I expect that most upcoming thunderbolt devices will have 2 ports for easy daisy-chaining.

 

[rockymtnhigh]

Yes, as I understand, you can daisy-chain up to 6 thunderbolt devices. And I expect that most upcoming thunderbolt devices will have 2 ports for easy daisy-chaining.

Good. I wish some hard drives would come out. I need another external drive to backup my photos and videos; I'll probably just get another firewire drive, but wish there were thunderbolt options.

 

[Ilya]

I took my MacBook Pro on a couple of business trips lately, and so far I am pretty happy with its performance as a travel laptop: compact size, low weight, solid body, backlit keyboard and long battery life: good enough for a long flight. I am also getting used to its limitations, like missing Windows keys or limited ports - not a big deal while on the road.

 

[rockymtnhigh]

I took my MacBook Pro on a couple of business trips lately, and so far I am pretty happy with its performance as a travel laptop: compact size, low weight, solid body, backlit keyboard and long battery life: good enough for a long flight. I am also getting used to its limitations, like missing Windows keys or limited ports - not a big deal while on the road.

I took it to DC and on my road trip last week. Considering I do not even have Bootcamp setup, and rarely use Parallels, I have not missed a windows key, and don't feel like I am limited in terms of ports. It is a good machine. Indeed, I like it more than any other laptop I have had. And now that I am totally sucked into the gestures, I can barely function with my Toshiba laptop.

 

[Ilya]

Well, I am not ready to give up Windows any time soon and Parallels are just too slow for me, so I do have a dual-boot (Boot Camp) configuration with more than 500 GB of the hard drive dedicated to 64-bit Windows 7, which I run most of the time.

 

[rockymtnhigh]

Well, I am not ready to give up Windows any time soon and Parallels are just too slow for me, so I do have a dual-boot (Boot Camp) configuration with more than 500 GB of the hard drive dedicated to 64-bit Windows 7, which I run most of the time.

I guess I don't think I would have a mac if I was going to primarily run windows on it. There are only one or two windows programs I need to use Parallels with, so the switch has been seemless.

 

[Ilya]

I guess I don't think I would have a mac if I was going to primarily run windows on it.

I like having both operating systems on a single laptop (for development purposes) - just one computer to carry around. I would really prefer to have Mac OS on a PC laptop or in a virtual machine, but unfortunately Apple's license doesn't allow that. So, I am running Windows on a MacBook and it works surprisingly well. Still an experiment though.