Abby and Win’s Blog

Archive for July, 2009

I finally bought the new Macbook Pro 13″ MB990LL/A last Saturday. It’s replacing my first gen Macbook Pro 15″ MA464LL/A. It’s 3 years old and still works great but it overheats. I was able to get a free iPod Touch 8GB and a $100 towards a printer – after rebate. I thought I could pull out my old hard drive from my 15″ and swap it with the 13″ but I was wrong. I’m guessing because the processor is different – Core Duo and Core 2 Duo. It took half of Saturday to transfer my files over but I got it to how I had my old laptop on the new one. With the help of Migration Assistant, the task was simple. It only took longer than I thought because I had a lot of files to transfer over.

I’ve already upgraded the storage with a Seagate 500GB hard drive and I’m planning on upgrading the ram to 4GB. So far, what has impressed me is the battery life compared to my old MBP. Here’s a comparison between my old and new MBP current setup.

	MB990LL/A (new)	MA464LL/A (old)
Processor:	2.26GHz Intel Core 2 Duo	2.0GHz Intel Core Duo
Memory:	2GB 1066MHz DDR3 (Upgradeable to 8GB)	2GB 667MHz DDR2 PC2-5300 (max)
Hard Drive:	500GB SATA 5400rpm	100GB SATA 5400rpm
Grapics Card:	Nvidia GeForce 9400m 256MB shared	ATI Mobility Radeo X1600 256MB GDD3 dedicated
Display:	13.3-inch LED-backlit glossy 1280×800 resolution	15.4-inch TFT 1440×900 resolution
Expansion:	One FireWire 800 port (up to 800 Mbps), two USB 2.0 ports (up to 480 Mbps), SD card slot	One FireWire 400, two USB 2.0 ports, and ExpressCard/34 slot
Network:	Built-in 10/100/1000BASE-T (Gigabit) Ethernet	Built-in 10/100/1000BASE-T (Gigabit) Ethernet (didn’t know it had Gigabit)
Wireless:	Built-in AirPort Extreme Wi-Fi (based on IEEE 802.11n draft specification); built-in Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR (Enhanced Data Rate) module	Built-in 54-Mbps AirPort Extreme (802.11g standard); built-in Bluetooth 2.0+EDR
Weight:	4.5 pounds	5.6 pounds

My old MBP was a work horse so I expect nothing less with the new one. I am however, taking a big hit on the video card being shared but I won’t be doing much video editing as I thought I did in the beginning.

Here is my initial Pros and Cons on the MBP 13″ compared to my old MBP 15″.

Pros:

• Improved battery life
• Upgrading HDD and ram is painless
• Runs at a lower temperature
• Trackpad gestures similar to the iPhone
• Firewire 800
• SD Card reader
• Cheaper
• Ram is expandable to 8GB
• Core 2 Duo

Cons:

• Shared video memory. I noticed a much lower FPS while playing WoW and visit a heavy populated area – while running other programs in the backgroun (ie: iTunes, Firefox, Quicktime, and other apps)
• No ExpressCard slot
• No Firewire 400 port
• Scratches easier
• Being a pound lighter, it doesn’t feel at all lighter

I’ll probably extend my list more as I continue to use it. So far I’m impressed. It’s a great upgrade for me. Here’s some pics I took http://www.flickr.com/photos/w1n78/sets/72157621866087202/.

I ran out of the cyan cartridge on my Brother MFC-490CW printer. All I need is to print something in black and white. I thought there would be a feature that can disable the color. I don’t see it on the printer’s LCD. I set my print properties to print in grayscale – it won’t let me print. The printer just won’t print until I replace the color cartridge that is not going to be used.

At least my HP 1600N printer allows me to override the cartridge message and continue to print. I wish this was a standard feature with all printers. Guess I’ll have to wait for the cartridge to come in. I’ll continue to use my laserjet which I started to pack up and store.