My first two weeks with my new Macbook Pro

[*DAMN Mauti]

Hi,

two weeks ago my new MBP 2.5 finally arrived. It's an awesome machine and the increased speed compared to my 1.33 powerbook is incredible. Everything is dramatically faster even the harddisk, although only 5400rpm fast, is 2-3,5 faster than my old 5400 powerbook drive. Everything opens quickly and the quality of the machine is almost perfect. My productivy should increase as well, as soon as I come over to think about how great my machine is.

However nothing is perfect, and so also my MBP has a little annoying issue. Although built quality seemed at first top notch my right fan seems to have a small problem. It buzzes and you can hear that if everything is silent, e.g. in my working room. As soon as I apply some pressure around the "p" key area it stops, so the fan probably doesn't sit tight on the motherboard, which causes the buzz. I'll let it fix for free as soon as I have finished some smaller projects.

Of course such an expensive machine shouldn't have any hardware issues and if you look at the apple discussions board it seems a few user experience this problem as well. So it seems Apple's quality control once again failed.

Beside that the machine is very silent and you can only hear some moving air if you come close.

All in all if you are still using an old powerbook the transistion will be a more than positive experience.

On the software side the transistion to Leopard and Intel went more or less without any issues. Leopard seems to be a bit more unstable than Tiger, but I guess that will be fixed with the time, as Tiger did.

Bye,

Mauti

[:MoD:Shade]

My fiance had an issue with the fan twice.  She has a 1st gen. MBP though so I somewhat expected issues.  THe most recent time we started to hear the fan be somewhat nosier than usual.  Eventually it got louder and louder and then one day it screamed for about 5 seconds then completely stopped.  We had to improvise a cooling device for the laptop but we finally got it to an apple store and they replaced the fan and the main logic board.  I'm surprised that you already have issues.

[*DAMN Mauti]

I think they just haven't fixed it right. The fan itself makes normal noice, however it seems they placed it bad so it causes vibrations, that are noticeable as buzz. As soon as I apply some pressure on the case the vibrations are gone and so is the buzz. However it should be fixed for free.

Of course this confirms my impression that Apple has issues with quality control since a few years. Also my girlfriend has a lot of troubles with her last gen iBook G4 12' as many other users have. Her logic board failed after 20 month. Although the guarantee time was already over, I got Apple to replace it for free with the help of the austrian consumer protection agency due the danish proof that it was a design fault. Well now just 1 month after the replacement guarantee of the logic board is over her airport, which is also installed on the logic board, fails. Bad quality, especially compared to my 9 years old still working iMac, or my friends 6 years old Titanium Powerbook.

Beside that the MBP quality seems excellent. The screen and everything else beside the right fan is as you should expect from Apple and its price.

So once the buzz is fixed I hope all issues are gone.

[Zomar]

There does seem to be a lot of laptop issues since the original intel ones came out, or at least it seems that way to me. There was the whole "random shutdown" thing that was plaguing many macbooks when they first came out. That happened to a friend of mine, but Apple fixed his. I have one of those original macbooks too and I haven't had any problems, except for the battery. The battery only has like 90 cycles but cant hold a charge for more than an hour. I tried to get them to replace it because its clearly aging way too quickly (I have applecare and still under warrenty), but they wouldn't because my particular battery wasn't included in the recalling they were doing. I can replace the battery for like $100 or so, but I don't want to spend the money since I use it plugged in 99% of the time.

Anyways I've been very happy with my macbook aside from this one issue for the two years I've had it.

Good to see you are enjoying your MBP though, I hope you get the buzzing issue worked out.

[static]

Mauti'

A nice upgrade for the MBP or any MB is the hard drive.  If you put a 7200 rpm drive in the speed will increase approx. 20-30 percent.  I put a 200 GB 7200 Hitachi for approx. $170.00 USD and saw huge gains in start-up, gaming and reading/writing to the drive.

[*DAMN Mauti]

Hi static,

nice to hear from you. I know however due the circumstance that I bought it via a special university offer I couldn't change any specs. However I'm surprised how fast this 5400HD is. It is also a Hitachi. The speeds are of course slower than the 7200er benchmarks posted on Barefeats but I'm very satisfied so far with it. And if I'm in the need for a speed boost for my already super fast MBP I'll gonna switch to a 7200er drive. Especially if larger 7200er HDs are released.