Owners of the newest 13" MBP, what are your main frustrations/grievances?

If we could limit it to the top 3 things you dislike, and whether you're overall satisfied?

 

1. Didn't like how CPU would have to heat up to 98C in order for the fan to ramp up
2. Not a fan of the multitude of tiny screws to gain access to the internals
3. Don't like the idea of the internal non-replaceable battery (won't be able to swap batteries on longer flight, etc)

 

1: non removable battery, as well as short lived battery when doing intensive applications.
2: miniDP port and adaptors for hooking to external displays
3: no more express card slot

 

For me:

1. No docking possibilities - (un)plugging four cables everyday is plain pain in the you-know-what
2. No E-SATA for speedy external hard drive connection (firewire just doesn't cut it)
3. Non removable battery

 

1- Display resolution too low
2- Gloss in the screen sux outside
3- Prolonged typing leaves my wrists with edge indents!

 

Anything else ??

 

4 replies, 197 views. it's a popular topic, at least! =P

maybe this means most owners are happy with it?? =o)

 

nothing is perfect... some people can even find annoying things in their maybachs

 

For me I am overall satisfied, my only major gripe is #1...

1) No HDMI, had to get the monoprice mini-DP + USB audio to hook up to my HDTV
2) Screen res could be higher, 1280 is fine for 10-12", but 13" can really use 1366 or 1440 option.
3) GPU could be faster, 1080p video output to a seconday monitor/HDTV can stutter at times...but I'm more thinking this is more OSX/app related since some video players perform MUCH better than others.

 

My girlfriend loves hers, and I think it's pretty sharp personally (even though I'd need a top level 15+). She uses it for surfing, email, and farmville.... to which it performs flawlessly.

I think it comes down to what you are going to use it for. For instance if I was to rate it for myself...

1. Slow processor
2. No eSATA/Expresscard/USB3.0
3. Poor resolution
4. 5400rpm HDD
5. Low Gamut screen

ect ect

 

lol USB 3.0....

but slow proc? really?

 

Well that's what I mean by it's different for each person . For my girl it's flawless, for me it's lacking for what I do.

If it fits what you are doing I think you will enjoy it.

 

maybe you want a quad... for proc.. so maybe that is the reason for the CPU.. but I don't get the HDD considering there's a SSD option. And not to be overly picky.. but USB 3.0 isn't likely to go mainstream till 2011 cause intel hasn't decided to include in it's chipsets likely till then and AMD that or later... but anyway more importantly Windows\Mac do not yet support it only linux. Cheers

 

unnamed says slow processor? and low color gamut?

what?!

 

Keep in mind I say it's a great system! Just that each system needs to meet the needs of the user I'm playing devil's advocate~

 

Note the sarcasm people........

Sigh.

 

I'm surprised nobody said anything about the ultra-reflective glass.

Come on, at least one of you has to be not a vampire, right? *Goes off to prepare some garlic and stakes*

 

1. Non-removable battery
2. No VGA port. Need bulky adapters to do presentation. And surprisingly, we need different adapters for different Mac laptops.
When come the presentations, Mac owners look unprofessional at all.
3. Short battery-life on Windows via Bootcamp. I got only 2.5 hours.

I stop at 3 as requested by the creator of the thread. If you allow, I will list at least 10 more

 

I'm not the OP, but I'd love to see your list.

 

As would I.

 

I'm curious how many people actually have spare batteries for their laptop. I had recommended to a coworker, who had griped about the lack of battery life on current models of Dells, to just get an extra 9 cell with their laptop for like $120. This was deemed an unacceptable solution.... Sort of makes me question whether a non removable battery can be a disadvantage in the casual user's market.

 

No offense to heavyrain2408, but he sounds like an on-the-go business laptop user. In such a situation, Macbooks are clearly not ideal. His complaints are all "business travel" related including the poor bootcamp battery life. I don't want to sound rude, but he should have never gotten a Mac (any Mac) in the first place for his specific useage needs.

I own a Mac for my personal usage, but would never get one for my work needs since my work is a PC only environment. For work, I need AutoCAD, Outlook for email and to be able to give PowerPoint presentations. As he mentioned, no projector has DP inputs (full size or mini) and you wind up looking like a goon with all the cables.

 

Heavyrain it sounds like you should of gotten a business laptop, not a Mac.

 

I'm not sure what some of you are doing on the 13 to get such short battery life... I get 4.5 hours gaming in Windows 7 with BC3.1. The 13" only has the 9400M, so you're not paying the price for battery like our 15 and 17 brethren are with the 9600GT.

I also think this machine has FANTASTIC color gamut compared to most PCs out there, and is easily tweaked with built-in calibration.

The non-removable battery is a non-issue since it lasts long enough for me to go from NY to LA, and won't lose charge capacity for 1000 cycles (we'll see).

The 9400M is also surprisingly adept at gaming. I like that my native res is only 1280x800, so I'm not pushng the GPU too hard to get native res in games.

Also, my machine is also a VM host for my work PC (Intel VT in the P8700) and giving presentations with it always creates a conversation piece about the machine and the fact that I can plug into DVI, VGA, or HDMI by changing a dongle on ONE PORT.

So I'll stop digressing, and list my only three wants - Mostly cosmetic, and one wishlist item:

- More curvature in the palmrest so that sharp edges don't slice up my wrists.

- Speaker grilles and pronounced speakers on the chassis like the 15 and 17 have.

- more spacing between USB ports, or accept an internal MiniPCI Aircard!

 

Maybe the gamut complaint is coming from some of you who have a 13" MacBook Unibody (late 2008) and want it to be a pro? Those had horrible screens by comparison (the ones I saw...)

 

Well, you haven't done much homework have you? The Mac version of Powerpoint is the same as the Windows version. Unless you do specific things with Outlook that can't be done with Apple's mail in Snow Leopard (which BTW is fully compatible with Exchange 2007 without any version of Windows of MS Office), there's no reason to "need" Outlook. Auto CAD is the only argument you can win on this, however most people in business aren't using AutoCAD, is everybody into architectural design?
The reason why Macs are dismissed by the enterprise industry is due to people like you who are ignorant to the capabilities of the Mac platform.

EDIT: Forgot to address your other misconception. You can easily get a Mini Display port to VGA, HDMI or other plugs for cheap on Monoprice.com.

 

My MacBook Pro comes to the office with me every day. I'm an IT Innovation Director for one of the world's largest companies, and I advocate open hardware standards with application/OS virtualization to bridge the standardization gap.

 

I agree here. More choices lead to commoditization.

 

Open hardware standards. I bet using a MacBook Pro for your work is a nice way to make a statement about how to bridge the gap.

 

I get plenty from my "old school" colleagues and even people that work for me that don't get it. I don't use the Mac to go against the grain, I do it to prove the concept of commoditized IT and cloud computing. It also ensures that there are a few of us always advocating for platform-agnostic strategy.

 

I know Mac Office 2008/Keynote is fully compatible for PP, but Entourage/Mail is NOT. Exchange 2007 support only. Not many businesses (mine included) upgrade there email servers every time there's a new MS Server release. I'd wager a major percentage of small businesses are still on Exchange Server 2003 or even 2000 still. It's simply not cost effective. We only upgrade our primary servers once every 7-10 yrs since we only share files and Exchange. So considering we did our last upgrade in 2007 (before the new MS Server was really viable to be deployed by our conservative IT consultants) we won't have a Mac compatible Exchange system for some time. Therefore, I NEED Outlook. Also, to take it one step futher...we do have Outlook web access. But it is severely crippled on a Mac since Mac browsers don't support ActiveX. You can't do a simple thing like searching your inbox

And yes, DONGLES are cheap from monoprice...I have several for my personal MBP However, my point is that I was agreeing with heavyrain that you would look like a goon having to plug in dongles/adapters just use a simple projector.