How on earth do I use this? (Apple MacBook MB062B/A)

Member Name: nickbrown60

Product:	Apple MacBook MB062B/A
Date:	19/02/09 (81 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Very Fast, Never Freeezes

Disadvantages: Hard to get used to,Expensive

Hello everyone and welcome to this review.
I bought this lovely laptop around 7 months ago. I bought it from Apple at the rather hefty price of £930! Ahhhh, allot I know but I still cannot decide if its been worth the money.

When My lovely Apple Macbook dropped on the doormat I was over the moon. It was in a stunning white very classy looking box with a picture of my dream machine on the front:)
Inside the box everything was extremely well wrapped, it was all in different sections.
Inside was:

The laptop
A charger
An ethernet cable
And all of the instructions:)
I couldn't help but notice the smell inside the box! Weird I know but I loved it..... It was like one of those new catalogue smells but in an Apple sort of way. Lovely! If you do buy one of these do be sure to smell the inside of the box.

Anyway back to the laptop.
I opened it slowly trying not to mark the lovely shiny Macbook. It is white in colour.... All white, every single part of it is white, a nice touch if you ask me, looks very clean and modern. When I opened it up I couldnt help but notice how simple it looked. For the price I was expecting a big thing covered in stickers showing off its features but nope! Just a plain white laptop.

Before using the laptop I had to charge it. The way this thing charges is amazing. The end of the charger is a flat piece of plastic. You do not have to push the charger into a little hole to start the charging like all other chargable products. The charger port on the laptop is a small magnet on the side, it just attatches with a strong magnet built of the end of the charging cable and can be easily removed. If someone in the room was to trip over the cable it would not damage your laptop at all. The magnet would just simply detatch and your cable and laptop charging port are fine! Yay, great design.
Once charged I turned it on and went through the start up process which was easy... Such as enter your name, internet options etc! The screen is very nice. Its a thin screen with a matt finish rather than the glossy like a lot of other laptops. The good thing with these matt screens is that they do not reflect in the sunlight! really handy for using the laptop in the car or outside. All colurs are great on the screen and it is fully adjustable.

The speakers built into the laptop are fantastic. The Macbook uses the apple software OSX 10.5.5 which I had some trouble getting used to but I will talk about that in a second. Anyway back to the speakers. All music is easily downloaded into the iTunes software. Most songs are 99p to download which is an okay price I suppose. I bought a 5 Pound voucher from Tesco to give it a try. Just choose the song you want, enter your voucher number and then your song downloads into your Itunes or iPod. When I pressed the play button I was so suprised by the quality of sound coming out of the Macbook. It was also very quick to load the song unlike my Windows laptop.
Now onto the specifications of the Macbook:
2.4 GHZ
Intel Core 2 Duo processor
2 GB ram
160 GB HDD ( Hardrive)

Now those specs are pretty good! It runs really fast and everything loads in an instant. I must say that the system loads applications and the web a lot faster that any Computer or Laptop I have had on Windows, they seem to freeze a lot but Apple does not! Honestly it never freezes. Its such a stable operating system.
Now onto the Apple Operating system
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The operating system is okay when you get used to it. When I first started on this Macbook I really did not know where I was as it is so different to Windows. The menu's and options are all totally different. When you get used to the layout it really is okay to use. Everything on the Mac is of use, Windows seem to enjoy filling their systems up with a pile of rubbish programs and trial software before selling to its customers which really is a bad thing. That is one of the main reasons that windows is so slow ( So I have been told )

The menu system is nothing like windows at all. At the bottom of your home screen is your menu. It looks a bit childish and simple at first. There is a line at the bottom such as "Safari" - This is Apples Web Browser In the world of Apple
Although the menu does look a bit childish it really does do everything that you need it to do. It is so simple when you get used to it but it will take time if you have never used a Mac before.

I just sat there...... How the heck do I use this?? repeated that all evening lol
Battery Life
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The battery life on this laptop is absolutely amazing, the Macbook comes with a 6 Cell battery. This provides a good run time of about 5 hours!! Which is pretty huge compared to all of the laptops and notebooks I have used. Spare batteries are great. I picked a fake copy of a battery up for £24.99 and it works really good. It is easy to switch batteries by clicking a little button underneath and out pops your battery.
Now the most annoying thing I have found with this Macbook is that it is not compatable with most of the software and hardware that I use in my day to day life. Its not like a Windows where nearly everything is ready to use just by popping a disk in... No no no, not with a mac. You will have to search the web for hours and hours to find programs to run your hardware etc Its a real pain. That is why I am using Windows as my main operating system at the moment,

BUT! I have just learned that you can actually put windows onto your Apple Mac. Apparently its very easy to do but as I paid so much for a Macbook I think I will keep it a mac. Otherwise I might aswell have gone to comet and bought a 400 pound laptop with the sam - If not better specs.
The keyboard of this laptop is lovely. It is inset into the actual laptop so there is a flat plat of white strong plastic and the buttons pop out through this. Great for cleaning..... Nothing ever get stuck in between my keys. All of the keys are well spaced out and very nice to press. They also do not make loud clicks when typing unlike other laptops I have used.

The laptop has a nice 13.3 inch screen. This makes the laptop very portable compared to some and really makes a difference when travelling. The screen may be smaller than most but it is big enough. Text is displayed large for comfort and ease of use. The laptop is also very lightweight, light enough to easily carry around with you.
The Macbooks Looks:
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The Macbook is a real stunner. It looks so nice and elegant. I have already mentioned that it is all white.... But this looks lovely! However it does bring problems. The top cover really does show up the dirt terribly. Its very easy to clean though as it is so smoothly crafted. On the back plate of the laptop there is the rather traditional light up apple with a bit taken out of it. This seems to be the Apple company's symbol and if you ask me it makes the laptop look lovely..

Now something I have not mentioned yet is the touch pad. The touchpad on an Apple is lovely. Its a huge flat off white colour and is very smooth so its easy to run your fingers accross. There is one button on the bottom of the pad which is the click. Unfortunately on this model you cannot click using the pad itself. You have to click using the button. And no no no!! It only has one click unlike windows. I really miss having just one click as I miss the right click and copy function. But this can still be done by holding down ctrl and c.
A few more features of this laptop before I end this review.
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There is a great built in webcam. It really is of good quality. I believe it is 1.3 MP which is okay for a webcam. I have used this on Msn and it worked well. But believe me..... Getting MSN on a mac is hard work! As it is windows software afterall

There is also a built in microphone which is very responsive. I have used this for video calls and it worked well ( So I was told:) )
The laptop has 2 USB ports Built in - Not a lot compared to other laptops I've owed but they will do.

Overall this laptop is greatly designed. It runs super fast and overall the value side of things..... I don't think I would pay that price again. Its good but im sure you could get better. But I think thats just me... I just cannot leave windows:) I have tried but I cannot pull myself away.
I hope this has been helpful
Thank You for reading
Nick

Summary: An okay laptop but I personally cannot get used to Apple!:(

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