MacBook Pro...Why Did I Wait So Long?
 

After my HP tanked for the umpteenth time I finally decide to listen to my 11 yr old and get a MacBook. i7... Wow...

eh...WOW.

I have to get used to the track pad - it's a little different then the HP but the programs are so intuitive and the speed is almost instant...nah, it is instant!

Been copying over files. What a breeze. Seems like all the stuff I did in Word, Excel, PowerPoint all transfers over. Haven't seen a glitch yet.

So, is there a downside to the MacBook pro that I'm not aware of?

If there were I would not own 5 of them.

Welcome to the dark side.

oh ya, I didn't buy it new, runs 2.8ghz on an intel core i7, 4gig memory with 750gig store. It was a demo - got it at a electronic store that a few friends swear by. They all have gotten stuff there for a few years - I got this for $750. Best laptop I have ever owned so far...

Scott, got it at BAM Electronics in Lewisville. So impressed I went and got one for my Daughter! Ever here of the place? Its off Mill St.

I think I've seen the place. Seems familiar.

$750 you can't go wrong.

Click the Apple upper left, select About this Mac, hit System Report, then SATA, what rotational speed is the hard drive?

Have owned mine for 5 years. Still happy!

I need a coaster to compliment the MacBook Pro. ;)

I've had mine for 4 years now and love it. Looking at picking up an Air just to have something more portable.

Scott, its 5400. Not really sure what that means...is 5400 any good?

PM you ship addy!

5400 rpm hard drive. You got the "T" model, the "E" and the "S" have a higher redline. :)

J/k, the only downside to a MacBook Pro is the price, kind of like a Porsche. There is no other downside.

But it'll still do 165 with the top off! ;)

5400 RPM.

That's pretty much the standard for OEM drives.

First thing I do is replace them with a 7200.

Faster drive upgrades from the manufacturer are a rip off and not worth it.

You can get a 1TB 7200 RPM drive from Newegg for as little as $65.

I'd also drop more ram in it.

An 8 GB upgrade will run around $80.

I have 16 GB in my main box and that will run around $150.

Scott,
Source the parts, do the drop and I'll pay out, buy ya lunch and throw in a coaster!

Yup, love mine.

1973 911T MFI Coupe, Aubergine

Steve

Im running this hard drive

HGST Travelstar 7K1000 HTS721010A9E630 (0J22423) 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 2.5" Internal Notebook Hard Drive - Newegg.com

Using this RAM.

Team Model TSD316G1600C11DC-E Laptop Memory - Newegg.com

but we need to check your model number to make sure it's correct, in About this mac->System report what is the current Type and Speed of the installed RAM. If DDR3 then that RAM will work.

BTW, you'll now see ads for crap like MacKeeper, ignore it. OSX is a .nix so it runs regularly scheduled maintenance jobs on its own. It also defragments on its own.

You don't really need Anti Virus but if you are suspicious get ClamAV, ClamXav it's free and I use it occasionally when I'm forced to download something from a sketchy source.

Occasionally the system will get sluggish, almost all the time that is Spotlight indexing the drive so it can find stuff instantaneously. You can check foe indexing by clicking the magnifying glass upper right, if indexing it will say so and performance will return to normal in a couple of minutes.

If you get the harddrive/ram let me know, I'll pop it in for you.

You'll wonder what to do with all of the time you'll have not fixing your computer. Enjoy, and remember to backup.

Scott,
It has Intego on it - a malware protection?

It is a 1333mhz and a DDR3.

May as well leave it.

The biggest benefit to AV software on a Mac is so you can catch stuff that comes in via email and not pass it on to Windows users.

The RAM in the link is faster which is fine.

Just checked their site -- Is This any better than yours ? (Listed at $850 .. can't see one for $750) :
APPLE 17 MACBOOK PRO UNIBODY 2009 MC226LL/A INTEL CORE 2 DUO 2.8GHZ 4GB 500 GB GRADE B

Cool - so the benefit is speed and storage? This thing moves 20X faster then my HP, I can't imagine it faster.

pc100porsche, mine is a 13 inch, 2011, grade B as well. From what I can tell, the grade is all about dings and dents. Mine looks brand new - hers had a slight ding in it. I got her a cover. All is good and I'm the best Dad ever for this week! I was able to kick him down cuz I bought one for my daughter as well. They have many different ones there. - I travel all the time and will use this for my writing and my LLC.

you will never pay to own a Win PC ever again. They'll have to GIVE it to me if they want me to use it.

Expect to be told "you're crazy" and "FOS" when you claim it's less problematic than a PC. Also, cue the endless hardware comparisons and how you can get so much more with a PC- Problem is, that cobbled up hack they call Windoze needs the extra hardware to run right. Given the option between a $2k PC VS my $1K macbook, I'll take the Mac, hands down.

Never goin back- if Apple drops the ball next stop is Linux.

rjp

[Palpatine]"...only now do you understand the power of the dark side..."[/Palpatine]

:)

Enjoy it!

I'm reading this with regret after recently buying a new Lenovo. The hardware is decent, other than the keyboard layout and requiring a hard button push I have no complaints. But Windows 8 is the most horrendous POS that I have ever dealt with. The fact that a major software company pushed this out as an upgrade is stupefying. Start8 emulates Win 7 to make it usable, but dear God it is terrible.

Faster rotation speed ='s faster boot and read / write so everything benefits.

Combined with the RAM upgrade the box will just breath better.

Significantly reduced instances of fans cycling up.

The box has two slots for memory. It'll have either one 4 GB stick or two 2 GB sticks.

You can add one 8 GB stick for a total of 10 or 12 GB and save ~$70.

Personally not a fan of unmatched sticks and subscribe to the old philosophy, "buy as much as you can afford"

Just looked at BAM's site.

They have Magsafe power bricks for $39.99

I'd grab a second one.

I always have extras, one permanently resides in my laptop bag, one stays in my office and I have one behind the couch in the den.

Nothing worse than going out on the road and finding you left it at home.

Plus Apple gets $80 for them.

The most annoying thing about my Macs, which may not be about Macs, is that when I open Word or Excel it automatically opens a blank file, which 90% of the time I have to close in order to open the file I want. I am told this is an Apple requirement, but I can launch Adobe products without a file opening. They just sit there and wait for me to open the file of my choice. Anyone know the scoop? Is this bane of my existence caused by Apple or Microsoft?

Hm? If I start Word or Excel it always shows me an empty new file on a PC or what ever OS.
You dont need to close that unused new file (or maybe you need to do that on a Mac?), just open the file of your choice and the empty one disappears.

I never start programs like that anyway. I double click the file I want open and everything is fine.

No idea.

I don't believe it's an Apple requirement as there are so many top tier apps that don't do it like Adobe.

Can I horn in?

Is the Yosemite OS worth doing? I am downloading it now...

Upgrade RAM to the max it will take. Should take at least 8 GB.

For even more speed, at the cost of less storage capacity, install an SSD.

I had no issues with Yosemite.

Yosemite is the first version that will save docs in cache so even if the box crashes it saves your work up to that point.

When it reboots your open apps and docs will all pop back up just as they were even if you did not save.

Useful feature but if you are like my wife and keep 1,000 browser tabs open I recommend disabling it since it will take forever to open all those tabs again and any that had media like videos will all start playing.

I usually go to "Open Recent" when I start work. The open, empty file doesn't close on any of my Macs until you close it. Maybe it's a preferences setting in the app?

With MackKeeper (and another I don't remember off hand) tabs opening our MBP is becoming infuriating to work with. Seems to happen mostly with Chrome (our default browser) and Safari (never use it). Firefox does not get spam tabs nearly as much. Just browsing PP I get a new spam tab for every other link I open. None of these apps are installed and no extensions other than ABP are installed. Any ideas on how to clean this all up? I have all our data saved to a back up drive so slicking the box and a fresh OS install is not out of the question.

CORE 2 DUO is old stuff now

you really need to forget spinning drives
and go solid state [SSHD] now fasted and less power used too double win!

Mackeeper is a tough one.

Unethical developer who circumvents best practice standards.

Basically a spammer.

Ad block plus has trouble dealing with it.

For sanity check Chrome prefs, under extensions disable / remove any extensions that you don't recognize or did not explicitly install.

Under settings check your search engines. In the top window google (or bing or duck duck) should be bold and set as your default.

Get rid of any that you do not recognize.

SSD's have their own unique issues.

Besides the higher cost per megabyte I simply don't trust them yet.

They tend to give little to no warning that they are about to go tits up and recovering them is difficult if not impossible for the average consumer.

Re: my MacBook air.
My ssd has gone down for the count, again.
Twice in the last 14 months.
The battery became swollen, popping/stripping the screws out the back.

Pretty disappointed with this particular unit, I gotta say.

I guess I will give the Pro a try.

MSFT neutered Office for Mac. My copy Office 2008 does the same thing. The definitely made it MSFT like for us Mac users.

Excel in the older versions like mine it's really noticeable- they leave out functions. 2008 Excel is a real pain to work for statistics. It doesn't get any better till the current versions.

rjp