So I decided to finally upgrade my 12″ Apple Powerbook. I had been waiting on the Apple MacBook to come out and knew that it would be something that I would find as a good upgrade. It finally came out, but I waited a couple of weeks before picking it up. I guess I wanted to see others initial impressions before taking the plunge. For the most part the positive reactions outweighed the negative. I’ve had the unit for a little over a week now and I wanted to use the machine for a little while before writing a review for this site.

I do have a little bit of a bias over Mac OS X and Apple products I will admit that, but I have been a user of Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux for quite some time now. To be honest I enjoy using all three platforms and each have its strengths and weaknesses. To me the best platform for a person is the one they are most productive on. A Windows users is more productive on Windows and a Mac user is more productive on a Mac. Of course this isn’t always true and over time if a user uses a system they might become better at the system.

So as far as the MacBook goes, I decided to purchased the unit in black over the white unit. The reason for this is the black unit was in a matte finish and I knew from owning iPods and a previous iBook with a glossy finish, it would only be a matter of time before the unit was really scratched up even with care and putting it in a case. That’s just something that is well known and should be taken into consideration. For that point alone I felt that it was worth the price difference. After a week of use the unit does pick up grease from my hands which can be cleaned off but no noticeable scratches.

The Apple MacBook comes comes with a 2.0 GHz Intel Core Duo processor, 512MB of PC2-5300 DDR2 RAM, 80GB 5400 RPM SATA hard drive, Superdrive, 13-inch widescreen display at 1280×800, buit-in Bluetooth and Wireless, iSight and Front Row, MagSafe power adapter and a slew of ports. So what ports: the MagSafe power adapter, gigabit eithernet, mini-DVI, 1 firewire, 2 USB and audio in and out.

After using the MacBook with 512MB of RAM I figured this would not cut it for the type of work I do. On a typical day I will have the following applications open: Dashboard, Adium, Mail, Firefox, iTunes, Photoshop, iCal, Pages, Navicat, Yummy FTP, Parallels Workstation, Syncopation, MySync and quite a few terminal windows. I also run Apache, PHP, and MySQL on the machine as well so I can test my web applications. After upgrading to 2GB of RAM the machine was actually usable for me.

It’s actually quite fast even running Windows through Parallels Workstation. I’m a web developer so I need to be able to test all modern browsers across platforms. Before I would have a PC dedicated to just doing this task. With Parallels Workstation I can easily toggle between operating systems and continue working. This is a huge time saver for me and I can work out in the field and be able to test within one machine. I had a little trouble installing the latest Ubuntu and Vista operating systems but I will save that for another post.

All Universal applications run really fast. I have a Mac Mini Intel Core Solo as well and that machine serves its purpose. This machine seems a whole lot faster. Probably due to the increase of RAM and faster processor. Photoshop isn’t fast by all means but the extra RAM really helps the application out. I can do most light work but I am still looking forward to CS3 where I wont need to use my PowerPC machine for heavier Photoshop work.

One thing that was unusual to me was that when I first got the MacBook the power adapter had a little hum to it. I brought it into the Apple Store and we tried a few adapters on a few machines and turns out that they all have the noise to them. Both myself and the Apple Store employees seemed confused by it. After having it for a while the unit does not buzz as loud anymore. I have no issues with it charging the machine but it still doesn’t seem normal to me.

Some people say the integrated graphics is a sale killer, but I disagree. For work and basic game play it works great. Of course really big game fans playing graphic intensive games should buy a machine with a dedicated graphics card. For people like me that use the machine for light gaming and more as a workstation I have no problems with it.

Overall, the Apple MacBook was a great purchase. I think it is very reasonably priced for the hardware and software that you receive in the unit. I would recommend the black model for the reason I stated above, but you could purchase the white one and save yourself a little cash. Above all since I was using the 12″ Powerbook this unit is just the right size for me. The screen is not too big and not too small. My next step for this machine is to upgrade to all Universal software when that time comes and I am also considering a hard drive upgrade. I read a few articles around the net saying its a pretty easy procedure to do. I’ve worked IT for a while and feel I’m pretty technically inclined so I don’t think that upgrade should be a problem for me. I’m happy with the purchase and I know other MacBook users are happy as well. I would highly recommend the system to those looking for a portable system and not too heavy on graphic intensive games. Well that’s it for now. As always if you have any questions and comments feel free to leave them.