I just can't see the point (Apple MacBook MB402B/A)

Name: Brad_Filangie

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Product:	Apple MacBook MB402B/A
Date:	23/07/08 (291 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Brilliant features and operating system

Disadvantages: It's not a budget laptop which it's meant to be

I have already written a review on the macbook black, but I am kinda ashamed of it now and don't think it deserves the VU rating it got, so here we go attempting it again with the other macbook.

So, here we are again, faced with the question of mac or PC. I can easily go into thousands of words exclaiming why you should choose mac rather than PC but lets be honest you're reading this so you must interested in macs.

So here we're looking at the lowest end of the spectrum of macbooks apple has to offer but at £699 that is very expensive compared to it's rivals, lets take a look at what it's up against. Dell Inspiron 1525, bought from the Dell website is £369 which is nearly half the price, we also have the Toshiba TL60 for £449.99. So it's obvious that price doesn't go in favor of the macbook, so why is it worth considering.

Well, this is where any mac can out do any new PC, the operating system. Leopard is Apples newest most renowned operating system which comes in every new mac, it has over 300 features to add onto the already brilliant tiger operating system which the leopard succeeded. The biggest feature, I think, is the Time Machine, this will automatically back up files hourly for the last 24 hours, daily backups for the last month and weekly backups for anything older than a month, with a very easy to use interface which is easy to use and a it does all this as soon as you plug in any external hard drive. In the leopard operating system we also have spaces, this is where you can have multiple screens operating simultaneously where you can easily drag programs from one screen to another, and flicking between the screens is as simple as 'apple, arrow key'. Then we move onto iChat, which is apples instant messaging service with webcam etc, with leopard you can use a tonne of new affects from photo booth to spice up your video chats, apple also use AAC-LD audio codec which delivers the highest quality of audio, iChat also offers screen sharing which is a fantastic new innovation where you can access and control the other person computer from your own and flick through files etc. The list is almost endless of what apple have now included in leopard, but when we compare it to the vista operating system. The first problem I see with Vista is all the choices because if you choose the wrong one you can end up spending far to much money or you end up with nothing like enough features. From the reviews and through what friends say, Vista is a complete and utter catastrophe for Microsoft with a large amount of people degrading back to XP. So now we begin to see why the macbook is so much more expensive.

So now we need to look to the tech specs, and to give you something to compare them to the Dell Inspiron 1525 which is the £369 laptop I mentioned earlier. As to why I've chosen this one to compare it to, this macbook is apples budget laptop and the Dell is Dell's budget laptop so it makes sense to compare the two together. Firstly lets take a look at the screen sizes, the mabook has a 13.3" which is relatively small compared to Dell's 15.4", but the larger screen size means the Dell weights 2.7kg which is 0.5 more than the macbook weighting 2.2kg, it also means that the macbook is more compact, 2.75 x 32.5 x 22.7cm compared to the Dells 3.7 x 35.7 x 25.6cm which makes the Dell bigger by about 3cm length and width and 1cm in height which is quite a lot of space on a laptop. As far as memory they are both evenly matched with each going up to 4GB as an extra. The macbook has a 2.1GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor while the Dell only has Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T7250. From this you can see that as far as these statistics go the two notebooks are pretty much evenly matched with the macbook creeping ahead, so how is the macbook worth the extra money. Well we just need to take a look at the actual price of the Dell, I've added all the statistics the website gave me in customising it and suddenly the price has come to a huge £635.76 and now it's suddenly looking a lot less impressive. And I'm gonna let you know how much I payed for the macbook, I payed a mere £500 for a brand new one by importing it in from America during the credit crunch and if you try hard you can probably get it cheaper. So now the tables turned and it looks like for a decent Dell you're going to have to pay more than for the macbook. So already the macbook is looking very favourable, and I haven't finished!

Apple is one of these companies which include lots of little toys in their computers, for example we have bluetooth as standard which is fantastic for sending files from computer to computer, computer to phone or phone to computer. It also has built in iSight, the webcam, along with photo booth which can amuse you for hours. There's also apples fantastic built in airport which is it's wireless which I've found fantastic. The battery life is also a fantastic 4.5 hours wireless productivity, and then we move onto the MagSafe power adapter that automatically releases is someone trips over it. Then it also has iLife free with purchase, this includes iTunes, iPhoto for editing photos, viewing photos and creating photo albums and frames, iDVD for creating DVDs, iMovie for making homemade movies while looking professional , Garage Band which is a home music studio and iWeb for making websites. And then the fact it's got a tough polycarbonate case means it's virtually indestructible.

If we then look over to how user friendly it is you begin to see how the macbook really does stand out, with the easy to use dock, spotlight to find any files on your mac, spaces, exposé to select a program which behind another program, and the brilliant tracker pad which out does any tracker pad I've used before. Then we get cover flow in finder and quick look in Mail and finder which means you can see the file without opening it. This is by far one the most user friendly computers around, apart from the rest of the mac range.

So, for the specs and the features it has this has a very competitive price which can be taken down if you look in the right places. But it's meant to be Apples budget laptop, so why does it have so many features and cost so much. What I think apple need to do is release a proper budget laptop which is cheap, not with so many features and has a price which can compete against the basic Dell 1525 (without the extra features). This is a fantastic machine but it isn't worth buying because the slightly more expensive macbook at £130 more has much better specs with twice as much memory so why bother with the cheaper one if it isn't cheap compared to other budget laptops.

Summary: I can't see the point in this macbook, they need to bring out a budget macbook

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