Avid readers of my blog may remember this blog post of mine about three months ago, in which I announced to the world that I purchased one of the new MacBook Pro’s, and explained my reasoning. Fast forward three months later. i am still extremely happy with my purchase - my MBP has performed flawlessly, and is problem-free. My CPU temperature rarely goes above 70C, and in usual lap-top use it is reasonably cool to the touch. Before installing the SMC firmware update, my temps ran a bit hotter, and the laptop would occasionally get uncomfortably warm in the lap; but since installing this update, the machine is quite usable both on my desk, on my lap, and lying in bed or on the sofa. I also have escaped the “swollen battery” problem; my battery is still fully intact, despite lots of use and numerous charge/discharge cycles. I also don’t have the whining noise problem, and my fans run pretty quietly unless I’m doing something CPU-intensive, and even then the sound level is within reason. Finally, my display is bright, clear, and flicker-free at all brightness levels.

As far as performance goes, I couldn’t be happier. Despite the fact that I have the “slowpoke” of the CPU line, the 1.83 GHz unit, I am still very satisfied with the performance. I felt a brief pang of irritation when, at the introduction of the MacBook (non-Pro), dropped the 1.83 from the Pro line; but after playing with a friend’s 2.0 GHz MacBook, I am pleased to say that it felt only slightly faster than my 1.83GHz unit and was certainly not worth the extra $500 that I would have had to pay in order to get a 2.0 GHz unit. Video editing and encoding moves at a very swift clip, and my games run at liquid frame rates, even the demanding World of Warcraft and Unreal Tournament 2004.

Windows and Macintosh compatibility all in one unit is an absolute godsend. Boot Camp runs the Windows software I need for work flawlessly, as well as the few games that aren’t available natively under Mac OS X. But honestly, I don’t need to reboot very often, thanks to the excellent Parallels virtualization software. Parallels allows me to run a Windows session on top of Mac OS X, thanks to the Core Duo’s support of Intel Virtualization Technology (VT) CPU extensions, which provides the capability to create virtual machines at very little performance/speed penalties. It runs all of the programs I need for work; what it doesn’t run however is games (no DirectX graphics support yet). (It also can’t yet sync to my Windows Mobile 5-based smartphone/PDA, as I will detail below.) So, the only reason why I need to reboot into Boot Camp/Windows is for playing games or syncing my PDA.

On the Mac side of things, everything is running very smoothly, as we Mac users have come to expect. More and more applications these days are coming out with Intel (”Universal Binary”) support, and for those that don’t, the Rosetta PowerPC emulator runs at acceptable speed. I use Photoshp quite a bit for retouching photos taken with my digital camera, and although Photoshop is not yet a Universal Binary, it runs at very reasonable speeds in Rosetta; I’d say about the same speed as it does on my iMac G5.

Right now, if you look at the Apple Store website, you will see all Intel-based Macs -- consumer desktops (iMac), consumer laptop (MacBook), and prosumer/pro laptop (MacBook Pro). The only thing that’s still PowerPC is the pro-end desktop (G5 Tower). Word on the street is that the desktop version of the Intel Core Duo chip (actually, the Core 2 Duo) is due out later this summer. And Apple has rescheduled their Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), from its usual mid-June timeframe, to mid-August. Kinda makes you wonder what Apple has up its sleeve, eh?

Anyway, as I mentioned earlier, the only two problems with Parallels (the virtualization software) I have is that (A) games do not yet run under it, and (B) I can’t sync my Windows Mobile 5 smartphone under it. Actually, one current limitation in Parallels is that, while many USB devices work from the Windows side, they only work at USB 1.1 speeds (slow!). A lot of USB devices are still plain incompatible. Windows Mobile 5 smartphones appear to fall into this category. They changed the sync protocol from the old, but simple serial-based protocol (used in Windows Mobile 2003 and earlier) to a new network-based protocol called RNDIS, which Parallels apparently does not yet support. Supposedly you can hack WM5 devices to use the older serial protocol by using an app called “USB Switch” - I found and installed this app, and tried it, but it did not work for me. I am hoping that Parallels gets this supported quickly; currently, there are no other options for using Windows Mobile 5 based devices on Macs (Mark/Space is working on Missing Sync for Windows Mobile 5, but it’s still in beta with no estimated date of completion).

In spite of the few wrinkles I’ve mentioned, I have been on the whole very pleased with the move to Intel, and with the new MacBook Pro. I consider it money well spent, and not having to lug around two or more separate laptops (one Mac, one PC) is definitely a plus. The MacBook Pro does everything I need and does it well.

Tags: computers, geek, mac, macbook, tech
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