Black is the new White. Yes, this is another post about something I bought. Picked up a super cool MacBook last friday after work. I heard that the previous models dropped in price with the release of the faster MacBooks earlier in the week so dashed over to Bic to take a look. They were dirt cheap, but I ended up picking up the newest model with the 2.16GHz CPU, 802.11n support and bigger HD. All my Mac friends ask me why I would do such a stupid thing like buy a MacBook NOW when everyone knows that Steve Jobs is going to announce a whole pile of cooler stuff in June, or why I didn’t get a MacBook Pro instead. Well, as I’ll explain below, the MacBook Pro is too expensive for my wallet at the moment and this MacBook was more of a trade rather than a new purchase. Also I’ve been wanting to consolidate all my PCs (meaning have Mac OSX and Windows on one PC) for some time now and waiting impatiently for Leopard to come out before doing it. The main reason, however, was that I saw this post by AC in my feed reader a month ago and it must have triggered some subliminal chain of events in my brain that lead me to get a Black MacBook against my will. Kind of like in the Manchurian Candidate except I didn’t assassinate anyone.
So, I sold my 2 year old Powerbook G4 and 8 month old Panasonic Let’s Note R5, which I regret to say I didn’t use very much since installing Vista (blah), and some other old peripherals at Sofmap. In case you don’t know, Sofmap buys used electronics and for a rather good price too. In total, I got over ¥220,000 for my trade in which more than paid for the Macbook and memory upgrade!! I didn’t think a PowerPC processor was worth anything but I guess I was wrong. This was a particularly good deal since in the 2 years I’ve had the Powerbook it must have been on at least 10 hours per day. I put that machine to good use alright and I’m glad to receive almost half what I paid for it originally. If you have any unwanted or unloved hardware sitting around I suggest you haul it over to Sofmap and see what you can get for it.
I’ve now got Mac OSX running along with Vista via Parallels. For the uninformed, you can install Windows on an Intel Mac and run them at the same time using Parallels or separately using Boot Camp. Been wanting to do this since they announced Boot Camp. Remember way back when people with DoComo, Tuka and IDO cellular phones couldn’t call each other because they were on different networks, not to mention those poor souls who could only afford PHS, and then one day they all got connected magically? And then remember how we jumped for joy because it didn’t matter what phone we bought anymore? That’s how I feel now! It’s awesome.
By the way, I’m getting rid of my MediaSkin. Yes, ALREADY!! Not because I dislike the MediaSkin, in fact I still really love this handset and I will miss One-Seg, but because I’m less than satisfied with the quality of AU’s network. Long term users of AU probably won’t know what I’m talking about but if you’re coming from Docomo’s 3G network you’ll notice how awful AU is in comparison. This weekend, I’ll be picking up a N904i which I dissed in this previous post because of its boring design, but upon closer inspection of the specs looks to be a truly significant phone with features that will blow your mind. The money left over from my PowerBook trade in will pay for this too!! Can’t wait to get it.
Congrats on your new purchase, I really cant keep up with your shopping habits though..I hope you can be happy with an item for a while in the near future… despite the fact that your trade in (s) pay for the new purchases do you ever feel regret as in “I wish i hadn’t bought that”….? Just wondering……
sweet…,!, and yes vista (blah) omg, i worked on two laptops yesteday and it took like 3 hours a piece
Finally… ;)
And I recommend Spontex’ microfibre for cleaning the black surface… :)
I’m interested… What do you think the difference is between DocoMo and AU? I have a friend who thinks quite the opposite. And I personally haven’t had any problems with no signal places anywhere so far.
Aquarius, yes I have made mistakes but I cut my losses as soon as possible and sell whatever the mistake was so I can get something back for it. But generally when it comes to hardware I do quite a bit of research beforehand so I know what I’m getting into. Recently, partly out of boredom I bought a copy of Vista which was a big waste of money IMO.
Rafael, yeah Vista is a drag to install and set up..
Jan, thanks for the tip!
Rick, I’m going to go into this in more detail later on but basically the sound quality is inferior and the reception is sketchy. I can’t really say if it is just the MediaSkin or the network or both but here are a few things that have been happening consistently:
1. I’ll be sitting somewhere getting a strong signal and waiting for a call and then after a while my friend will call me and yell at me saying she tried to call me a couple times just now and I was out of range. I’ve been on the opposite end and had the same frustrating experience trying to call someone with an AU and not get connected. Maybe this happened before but I never noticed it.
2. I’ll be sitting somewhere in range and then suddenly a voicemail notification will appear saying someone left a voicemail just now but my phone did not ring.
3. If I stand in the middle of my house the phone displays that I get a signal but when I try to call my phone it doesn’t ring. I get an out of range message
4. All my Docomo friends have been complaining how my bad the sound quality is now and many times while I can hear them clearly they cannot hear what I’m saying.
5. I’ve been cut off so many times in the last month in places where the signal seems rather strong like in train stations, department stores etc.
It could be that the handset is bad but even so the sound quality of Docomo Foma network is just way better.
Congrats Roy! And excellent purchase. I was just getting ready to go buy the 2.16GHz White model myself. I’m an ADC developer and they offer big discounts on systems so I plan on buying mine through the ADC Hardware Purchase Program.
The MacBooks are cool and light and not too heavy. Easy on the wallet too. Enjoy!
I like the macbook, especially the black version. The only thing why I didn’t buy it yet is that the screen has special high contrast screen. It is not so fine for photography works.
I was worried about this screen which has a glare too but at home it seems to be ok and the contrast isn’t too bad for my purposes.
sono keitai wa suki desu…
will you post (stupid question) when you get your new keitai? are you getting the kink one? ; )
I want to post about my new keitai of course but there this idiot at http://www.hatchiko.com who has been stealing many of my posts word for word and it’s pissing me off. I’ve already notified his/her hosting company about the copyright infringement and they are in the process of taking the site down. It’s very irritating and making me cautious about what I post here for the time being.
Nice MacBook ,brutha.
Me want an Intel-Mac too since Adobe CS3 is already out but me no cash…