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Wrao
Yarp
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Road Warrior
 
2006-06-07, 04:00

I'd like to chime in with my thoughts on playing with a macbook for the first time recently. It is a phenomenal machine, very powerful, snappy, light, thin, and well built. The only things that I would say annoyed me were the keyboard and the trackpad.

The keyboard is a major improvement over the old ibook keyboard, as is the trackpad, both feel wonderful and are very responsive and well designed... for the most part. I dislike how big they've made the trackpad, it's not a huge deal, but it is just kinda weird, there are measure to avoid accidental input, I know, but it seems like such an unnecessary edition. I suppose it is because they have been vamping up the trackpads touch features, but still.

The keyboard is very responsive and it feels great, my only gripe with that is that it feels a little bit too wide. I have huge hands and even then I found myself having a hard time trying to touch type or otherwise type at the pace I'm usually comfortable with. I'm sure I'd adjust very quickly, but it still stuck out to me.

I'm wary of the integrated graphics only because I feel them to be far less futureproof than a dedicated GPU. I'm sure that they can run all the OS and gizmos just dandy for the time being, but what about 3 years from now when the OS has become more complex, or iLife is more taxing, or more HD formats start becoming standard...etc. I mean, sure, 3 years might be time to upgrade anyway, but it seems like a dedicated GPU would be more assured to work later down the line than the integrated one.

I will most definitely be getting a macbook. I'm torn over wanting the Black one very badly(it looks amazing in person) and wanting to be economical. I have a hard time justifying $150 for a paint job, and since the HD is user upgradable now, getting the 80 GB HD standard doesn't really appeal to me, I could settle for 60 GB and bump it up to 120 on my own and probably save some cash.

The black model seems fairly out of place. It seems like it wants to be a 13" macbook pro, but lacking a dedicated gpu prevents it from really filling that role, despite being priced there.
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