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63 of 63 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Superb notebook, swallow hard when you buy the warranty, 25 Oct 2009
This review is from: Apple MacBook Pro 13inch 2.26GHz/2GB/160GB/GeForce 9400M/SD (Electronics)
You'll love the machine; it is powerful, slim, oozes quality, light, great to work with and Mac OS X is a good operating system. It is good value for money for the spec (pardon - is this Apple?), until you see the extortionate extended warranty cost. Take care of it - get a neoprene sleeve to keep it in.
Here is the detail in comparison to any windows machine in this price territory (I looked hard). The good:
- Slim, weighs 2 kg, around 0.5kg less than most
- Fast processor and 1066 MHz DDR3 RAM. Its 2.53GHz pricier sibling is a touch faster but I would only go for that for photo/video work with its extra RAM and disk.
- Excellent design and finish - it should get an award
- Reliable, secure, small footprint OS
- Excellent battery life, LED backlit display
- Low noise - essentially silent in operation until the noisy DVD drive spins up.
The not so good:
- Battery is not user replaceable.
- The aluminium casing is "form over function". It can be scratched and, being metal, it can be dented too; I have seen this at work. The white polycarbonate MacBook is your "student" option. Don't let that "hewn from a block of solid metal" appearance fool you.
- Mini-DVI monitor output will ALWAYS require an adaptor at extra cost. Why not HDMI out? Only 2 USB, no eSATA, but does have fast Firewire.
The terrible (one star off ...I can't divorce this from the machine; applies to its 2.53GHz sibling too):
- Extortionate, £195, AppleCare warranty extension; twice the price of most notebooks. AppleCare costs just £50 for educational use. Which is it? Will it fail badly (screen or motherboard) or are Apple overcharging?
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54 of 56 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Awesome!, 2 July 2009
This review is from: Apple MacBook Pro 13inch 2.26GHz/2GB/160GB/GeForce 9400M/SD (Electronics)
I've been waiting for the unibody Macbook Pro line to be updated since early this year, it was worth the wait! This update really has put the 13" machine into the pro line, and even though I was worried that the lack of the dual-graphics cards you get with the higher price models might be a problem I needn't have worried. The screen is amazingly bright with very vivid colours, and it handles games at high quality settings with fps at around 20-50 depending on the game and what it's doing, usually smooth and clear.
This machine does get rather hot, as the aluminium body is used to transfer heat out of the interior, I wouldn't want to use this on my lap. And it would be nice if Apple would start putting Blu Ray in their computers.
I can live with those two problems, and for me this machine is simply fantastic!
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41 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The best laptop I've owned - but sketchy battery life!, 7 Nov 2009
This review is from: Apple MacBook Pro 13inch 2.26GHz/2GB/160GB/GeForce 9400M/SD (Electronics)
Having never owned a Mac before I was immediately impressed when I saw the price of this entry-level MacBook Pro. I upgraded to 4GB of RAM which I know was no-doubt helpful. The laptop itself is absolutely outstanding!
The Screen - Owning both a 9-inch netbook and a 15-inch full laptop, I knew I wanted something in between and 13" happened to be the sweet spot. Before it arrived I thought it was going to be a bit too small but as it turns out it is just the right size. The edge-to-edge glass is great for cleaning although it does reflect a lot but you will soon learn automatically how to position the screen depending on the light source around you. The brightness is perfect and can go from relatively dark to extremely bright so is great for all light conditions.
iSight Camera - This is the integrated webcam and it plays one of the most important jobs in my opinion. Not only is it a webcam for your Internet video chat but it also is an ambient sensor which means that it will constantly detect the light around you and brighten and dim the screen and do the same for the keyboard. You won't notice it happening but when you do think about it, it is amazing. The quality of the iSight is sufficiently good for YouTube though it is by no means amazing - you could get away with some video podcasting with it.
The keyboard - This is yet another part of the computer which I had never paid any attention to before - because a keyboard is just a keyboard right? Well actually, this keyboard is amazing to type on - the spacing between the letters is just perfect, it is the right size and has function keys for just about anything you would need. If you use "windows" you'll no doubt notice a few new symbols and the Windows key has disappeared. The best thing about this keyboard is that it is backlit meaning that in conjunction with the iSight camera, it automatically figure out the right amount of light for your keyboard and makes typing so much easier. It will also save your eyes when typing in bright light or in the dark.
The trackpad - Another innovation for me - it feels amazing - it is made out of a specially coated glass where your fingers glide across (not scrape across like other laptops), there are no buttons and in fact the whole trackpad is a button - press down anywhere to click. The gestures are fantastic too - scroll by swiping two fingers downwards, four fingers down launches expose where you can see all your open windows and there's much more to do. It will become natural in a day or two of using it.
Software - Mac OS X is included which is no doubt, in my opinion at least, hundreds of times superior to Windows. The Mac comes with loads of free software including the iLife suite which include everything from website building tools to music making and professional video editing tools. There are programs which allow you to take photos and even create a greenscreen style effect with just any coloured wall behind you. The Mac also comes with no crapware or bloatware what so ever so no Norton Internet Security, 'no antivirus or useless webcam programs. It is all good quality programs are there plus some luxury too. 'Bootcamp' software comes installed which makes a Mac the only machine that can legally allows you to run Windows, Linux and OS X on a machine.
Ports - As far as ports are concerned there are a measly two USB ports which is rather disappointing, a Magsafe (power) port an Ethernet port, FireWire, mini DisplayPort, an SD card slot and a combined headphone/microphone jack, it also has a CD drive and on the right side and it has a power indicator button on the left side to check how much power you have without firing up the whole system. Bluetooth and Wifi are here too obviously.
Battery - This was by far the biggest disappointment out of the whole system. Firstly, it is non-user-replaceable meaning I can't carry a spare with me and pop it in - well I could if I carried around a screwdriver and unscrewed ten screws and violated my warranty each time I wanted to replace the battery. Also, the 7 hours claimed life...not true. I have got 3.5 hours with Wifi on and no video playing and 5 hours with no video and no Wifi. To get 7 hours you'd probably need to turn down the screen brightness to the minimum level, have one application running with no background apps, no video, no CD in the drive and have the keyboard brightness turned fully down. It also claims that you will get 3 years of the battery with 1000 recharges no available. That is assuming you only recharge once a day. Having owned this Mac for about 2 months and a week, it is shocking to see that I have gone through 95 recharge cycles already. Almost 10% of my battery in 2 months!? Soon I will start losing hours of battery and I can already tell that 18 months from now I will be 80% of the way to those cycles. The only way to get a new battery is to buy one at the Apple Store unless it loses a lot of power in under a year where Apple Care will cover it during the first year in any Apple store.
Just a final note on the battery, if I leave the Mac in sleep mode it will lose about 8% of it's battery overnight, when it shut down completely it can lose as much as 20% of it's battery in 8 hours which I think is unacceptable.
However, despite the battery this laptop is by far the best ever as it is a small price to pay for what you truly get. (I haven't even gone into the amazing processing power it has and the amazing 1066Mhz DDR3!!! Ram which nearly no other manufacturer offers and especially not at this low, low price. This will be the best £900 you'll ever spend (do upgrade to 4GB and a 250GB HDD if you can afford to though)
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