Santa Rosa MacBooks

Apple released them quietly but these look great

[timster]

Apple's been so quiet about them you might have missed it, but they've refreshed MacBooks with a new architecture.

Their previous low-end laptops had pretty dismal 3-D graphics performance, but the new ones have the better (GMA X3100) integrated video in Intel's newer "Santa Rosa" chips. The new MacBooks also allow up to 4GB of RAM.

We ordered one today, after making due with a second-hand PowerBook G4 for ages. I'll post my impressions after it arrives.

[weeks]

I'd be interested in how it compares. My laptop is an old no-more-upgrades G4 Powerbook as well.

[timster]

The MacBook arrived last night. This is the bottom-of-line model, but with a bigger hard drive (through BTO at the Apple website). It's mainly going to get used for web design, plus some programming. It seems like a lot of machine for the price.

Leopard is very nice but a bit of an adjustment here and there. No surprise here, but it's just leaps and bounds faster than the old PB G4. Screen is nice and bright and beautiful.

I'm not in love with the keyboard, but maybe I'll get used to it; sometimes when I hit keys with my pinkies it didn't register.

Let's see, I got some apps installed (NeoOffice, Eclipse, BBEdit, CyberDuck, a couple free games off Apple's download site, plus the XCode developer tools) but am holding off on some because of Leopard compatibility issues. For instance MySQL...I've seen instructions for getting it to work with Leopard but am waiting for the official Leopard installer from MySQL AB.

For a little security, we are setting up one administrator account for doing installs, and then non-admin logins for everyday use.

Despite the improved graphics compared to the previous MacBook architecture, it doesn't look like this will be much of a gaming machine.

Enough of my babble. We like it a lot.

[weeks]

it's just leaps and bounds faster than the old PB G4

As I suspected. Thanks. Good to know.