A great piece of kit....
Pros: Fast, reliable, light, well built, good software
Cons: Battery built in, not easy to replace....
A great machine. First off I would like to say I am not a fan of Apple, with their generally proprietary products. But after having an Iphone, Ipad and tinkering with some old Mac books and getting given an iMac, I decided to take the plunge. Yes it is expensive compared to similar specced machines, but the build quality is second to none. The only reason I knocked half a star off is due to the difficulty in removing the battery - unlike most other laptop, click a couple of switches and it drops out, this requires sending to an Apple techs to do (although I could do it myself, it is not easy). I opted for the basic model (or the cheapest depending on which way you look) which has the i5 CPU at 2.3Ghz, 4Gbs of RAM, 320Gb hard drive, Intel 3000HD graphics (with up to 384Mb of RAM) and most importantly a DVDRW drive. This is the main reason I chose it over the cheaper 11" Mac book air. Even though apple are hell bent on ridding us of the ROM disc, they are still here and probably in the next few years too...
Anyhow, on I go. Switch on was flawless and it took about 30 seconds to boot into Snow Leopards desktop (this is once I had set it up to myself). The keyboard is backlit and switches the light off when conditions are right, it was very responsive and had a really nice non clunky feel (unlike a lot of notebook/netbooks I have used). The big difference though between this and the older notebooks was the track pad. This takes a bit of getting used to, but if you have an Ipad or Iphone, you'll pick it up straight away - what's missing are buttons, but they are there, scrolling however you use two finger strokes. This if you read the instruction book let is all explained and is worth having a flick through. The DVDRW drive is the standard slot loader and maybe for the price paid they could have put a Blu ray reader or writer in. On the opposite side of the DVDRW are the I/O ports, consisting of a magnetic power point for the AC supply (I cannot sing the praises enough of the magnetic connector due to fixing so many DC sockets), a LAN port, a Thunderbolt port, an Apple Fire wire 800 port, 2 x USB2 ports (why not USB3?), a card reader which takes SD cards, an earphone slot and finally very discreetly shown a button and lights to tell you how much charge is left in the battery. On the front is an IR point (why I don't know, have never used an IR device on a note book and I generally thought it was defunct). Next to the IR port is the hard drive activity light which is very discreet, you won't even notice it, but it comes on when the laptop is in sleep mode, the hard drive is doing hard work and when you power up. On the top right of the chassis is the on button and the top left looks like the microphone.
The 13.3" display is crisp and very clear and at the top is the web cam, which is HD, unlike the Mac book airs. Plus the screen has a rubber ring round it to protect it when you close the lid.
Purchased it an Apple store, which had excellent service. When I set it up, they gave me a free upgrade to OS X LION which should have cost about $29. But I made sure it all worked before I left the store, so was a very satisfied customer.
Overall, a well built note book. Customer service is exceptional with Apple, I would highly recommend going to an Apple store to buy one rather than a normal electrical goods store or online - this way you can get some freebies. It is expensive and you are buying into the Apple mentality, but it is worth it to run LION, which is another review in its own right.
Anyhow, on I go. Switch on was flawless and it took about 30 seconds to boot into Snow Leopards desktop (this is once I had set it up to myself). The keyboard is backlit and switches the light off when conditions are right, it was very responsive and had a really nice non clunky feel (unlike a lot of notebook/netbooks I have used). The big difference though between this and the older notebooks was the track pad. This takes a bit of getting used to, but if you have an Ipad or Iphone, you'll pick it up straight away - what's missing are buttons, but they are there, scrolling however you use two finger strokes. This if you read the instruction book let is all explained and is worth having a flick through. The DVDRW drive is the standard slot loader and maybe for the price paid they could have put a Blu ray reader or writer in. On the opposite side of the DVDRW are the I/O ports, consisting of a magnetic power point for the AC supply (I cannot sing the praises enough of the magnetic connector due to fixing so many DC sockets), a LAN port, a Thunderbolt port, an Apple Fire wire 800 port, 2 x USB2 ports (why not USB3?), a card reader which takes SD cards, an earphone slot and finally very discreetly shown a button and lights to tell you how much charge is left in the battery. On the front is an IR point (why I don't know, have never used an IR device on a note book and I generally thought it was defunct). Next to the IR port is the hard drive activity light which is very discreet, you won't even notice it, but it comes on when the laptop is in sleep mode, the hard drive is doing hard work and when you power up. On the top right of the chassis is the on button and the top left looks like the microphone.
The 13.3" display is crisp and very clear and at the top is the web cam, which is HD, unlike the Mac book airs. Plus the screen has a rubber ring round it to protect it when you close the lid.
Purchased it an Apple store, which had excellent service. When I set it up, they gave me a free upgrade to OS X LION which should have cost about $29. But I made sure it all worked before I left the store, so was a very satisfied customer.
Overall, a well built note book. Customer service is exceptional with Apple, I would highly recommend going to an Apple store to buy one rather than a normal electrical goods store or online - this way you can get some freebies. It is expensive and you are buying into the Apple mentality, but it is worth it to run LION, which is another review in its own right.
