Apple MacBook 2.1 Intel Core 2 Duo

I wanted to upgrade my old Titanium Powerbook (bought in 2001) and so took a flight to London to personally handle the latest MacBook Pro 17". I walked into the shop in Regent Street with £3000 cash - discovered the MBP was in my eyes rubbish, so came home again without wasting my money. I had seen the Macbook 13" black book and was impressed since it was compact and had most of the features of the MBP. Hence at the start of December 2007 I walked into a shop in France and bought it - you can only go for so long trying to use hardware which is seven years old when working in the hi-tech world. I made the compromise and bought this Macbook and was able to persuade Monsieur Lawrence of Apple Service in France to exchange the French keyboard for a QWERTY one free of charge. He was also kind enough to send me the latest "Leopard" (OS10.5) disk since the display model I had bought had the old "Tiger" 10.4.10. Since I work with multimedia and am very impressed with the software delivered with iLife (disk included with the Apple products) I was disappointed to see that most of the items which are of use, do not work using Leopard. So I returned to the older Tiger and this is the system that I am presently testing. With only 1GB of memory I believed that the applications may be a little slow but actually everything seems to be operating as usual. My old Titanium runs at 400MHz and so with the present speed of 2.16GHz I expected an increase in speed but should have known that there would be no change. Software takes just as long to start up, close down and granted I can run several enormous programs parallel, nothing actually is any faster.

Points of comment

1. The battery life with the Macbook shows just over 5 hours when fully loaded - it remains so and even went up to over that, maybe 5 hours fifteen minutes when just reading a PDF. However naturally when I start "GarageBand" then it fell dramatically to 3 hours in just seconds. I have not yet tested the battery completely using hi-consumption programs but believe that it may be less than 3 hours if pumped hard.

2. The screen not folding back any further than 50 degrees from horizontal is very limiting. If I am standing and looking down at the screen from above on the desk then I have to crouch down to view it. This is a big inconvenience in certain situations.

3. The screen is much brighter than the Titanium (Apple quote a percentage increase which I take to be true). The glossy screen is also higher in contrast which improves the image. There are few situations in which the gloss is disruptive to viewing. Even in bright sunlight (in winter in France...) the screen can be viewed reasonably.

4. The installed 1GB memory can be replaced with two 2GB chips. I took one chip out and wanted to replace it with another 2GB but found they were totally incompatible but on attempting to replace the original chip tried for one hour to reinsert the old chip - it must be inserted slightly off parallel with the left side going in first and then the right - very important to know this, otherwise your computer is worth nothing! 2GB chips are not available in France presently

5. The power socket is excellent - if jerked quickly the laptop does not fall to the ground but the cable releases itself and saves computer damage. Apple seems to make some advances forward and everyone applauds but sadly no one seems to see the down sides except me. The new plug is square. Thus it has been designed to CATCH on table corners, in grooves etc and then be torn off, if pulled any harder. Apple could have made it ROUNDED so that this could not happen but needed to catch out those people who pull their things around regardless of where the other end of the power cable is hanging and eventually catching. Sad, but now you know you can take care. Similarly they have made wonderful advances in the power cable tangle problem - to a point. The excess cable can be wound around two pull out catches on the power unit to take up slack. To those of us who tolerate a mass of annoying cable this is a great move forward - but for me I am sadly aware that it could have been made correctly - the old round power supplies took up the slack INSIDE the body of the case, leaving no unsightly cable AT ALL! Alternately, the catches COULD HAVE BEEN exactly designed to match the cable and thus leave a flat surface - the present surface is hard edged and thus when used, looks just as ugly as if you were to glue two bits of plastic to the power supply to wind up the excess cable onto. Two steps forward one step back. The power 220V cable cannot be wound up anywhere but just hangs there in its full unsightly 1.5metre length. Granted, Apple again will argue that they also deliver a two-pin power plug (without cable) which can be REPLACEED into the power supply and thus do away altogether with the 220V power cable. Sadly, I want perfection.

6. There is an Audio In socket which is an important advance rendering the need to buy special USB audio converters unnecessary. Apple DOES listen when enough of us tell the truth and complain.

7. What has never been made an option (because I am the only one seems to be aware of the possibility) is the ability to use any laptop screen as an EXTERNAL SCREEN hence linking one laptop to another and doubling screen size. Hence each who upgrades from one laptop to another could link both computers and have perhaps twice as much space to work on.

8. On this model I often have a visual freeze of four seconds regarding the mouse movement. I click on an option and when I want to continue I cannot see the mouse until four seconds have passed and then it appears. For those of us who wish to do things quickly this is not just annoying it makes us want to go out and go hi-tech, computers do things in cycles of micro-seconds, there is no excuse for this on any computer - My warranty lasts 90 days so I will either exchange the present model or continue to throw light on the failings of manufacturers to deliver basic goods.

9. The sharp edge on the edge of the keyboard cuts into you and requires you to wear a thick pullover or a wide watch but there is no way that you can work for more than ten minutes bare-armed unless you can hold your wrists in mid-air for ten minutes at a time. When the warranty is up I will file the corners down with a rough grinder after covering the keyboard to prevent dust entering. I want a machine to work with - not a fancy box to show to friends to impress how elegant my latest (non-usable?) gadget is.

10. The trackpad is not as shiny as the Titanium and so my sweaty fingertips do not slide so quickly over it, yet another backwards step carefully thought out by meticulous designers.

11. Bluetooth functions work simply and perfectly - a wireless keyboard from Apple (89) works seconds after inserting batteries (sadly Apple do not wish to tell the users which way batteries should be inserted, no "+ "or "-" indicated on the device, fortunately incorrect polarity does not render the unit destroyed - future models may use this useful method of expanding the market).

12. All the areas in which the computer operates correctly are not mentioned here - they are obvious, and should not in my opinion be worthy of comment. From my cynicism, it should be obvious that I have high expectations from electronics which have taken the human race millions of years to develop have also cost millions of dollars to produce. Sadly, marketing departments require sales to continue to expand and thus most of the problems encountered with these machines are in the area where the user is directly involved - thus can be given the blame for failure. The real developers hence see their beautiful inventions made redundant by an outside shell which destroys any utility but increases sales as customers are just not wise enough to see through the game. Hence we have "review centre" and I support them for no charge since I wish to see us all progress.

This is the best "small laptop" available on the market, better to get the best than waste your valuable time wondering why "the cheap one" is failing you ;-)

Thanks to reviewcentre for providing this forum in which to present my critique and to Apple for attempting what we all thought was impossible!