Macbook Pros and Cons

Well, it's been a good two weeks since I got this Macbook Pro, and I hate to say it, but I can't say I'm that impressed with it. The laptop was about $1400, ($600 over what my parents were willing to pay), with specs that are pretty close to top of the line. It's got an intel Core 2 Duo, one of the best processors available, 4 gb of ram and a solid 320gb hard drive. It's even got an graphics card. I figured it'd be able to handle anything in this house I could throw at it, being nearly the best computer in the house. But after these past two weeks of usage, I'm not sure I feel it was worth the extra money. At this point, it's probably a good idea to take a good look at what works and what doesn't here, because I can think of other ways to spend that 600 bucks, and if this computer isn't living up to those kinds of standards, I wouldn't mind going back to the drawing board.
By the way, this post is more for me than for anyone else, so feel free to not waste your time reading it if this doesn't really interest you.

First off, 1) Battery Life
The Apple Store said this macbook pro had a battery life of UP TO 7 hours. After spending a good long time laptop hunting, i've learned that those words don't carry a whole lot of weight. But I figured, it's Apple, and there known for having their stuff work, so I took their word over other promises. So far, I can tell you this battery has not lasted me seven hours. Maybe they mean seven hours spaced out over time, or seven hours with the screen turned really low, but I haven't gotten more than five out of this thing in my "tests". I was rarely doing anything more strenuous than web browsing. Mind you, five hours aint bad. That's around what my other options were advertising. I don't think I'll find a better battery than the one I have here, but the battery life is something pretty important to me. I would have hoped for the extra money, it would have actually lasted that long. Pass.

2) Structure and Keyboard
One of the main reasons i went with Apple was not because of its software, but its physical features. I liked the spaced out Apple keyboard, and coming from a laptop missing several keys, I knew I wanted a keyboard built to last. I also came from a laptop which was falling apart in other areas, and so I felt something important to have in the new laptop was solid construction. It was the main thing that turned me off about every other laptop I found (except the sony viao)- they all looked like they were about to fall apart. I don't know if it's some new trend to have your laptop built out of as many pieces as possible , but I wanted something that didn't have much room for loose pieces. I expected these things from the macbook pro, which boasts about its light up keyboard and "aluminum unibody", and for the most part I got it. The construction is just as durable as I could have hoped, and I doubt I'll find such a sturdy laptop even from Sony's elite brand. I also have no reason to complain about the keyboard (and the lights are pretty cool, if not battery inefficient), but for some reason it hurts my hands to type on it. I'm not sure what the reason it, and I don't know if a different laptop would be more comfortable or not. It could be the spaced out keys are making my fingers stretch across the keyboard more, but that sounds kind of far fetched. I thought having the keys spaced out would lessen the chance of me pressing the wrong key, but Apple's keyboard is slightly different anyways, causing me to hit the wrong key more often than I would hope to. Still, I'm very satisfied with both the construction and the keyboard, and they're both two things I would still hold very important if I decide to go for something else.

3)Display
The display is pretty amazing. Many laptops nowadays talk about their awesome screens, so it's hard to say for sure if this screen is a special mac screen, or if its really the same as the others. I would hate to get a different laptop only to find that the screen is inferior to this one, but it seems all too likely. I can't imagine it getting any better, but I worry that it would get worse.

4)Ports
Here's a major annoyance- the macbook pro has only two usb ports (even my old toshiba had 3) but the real problem is that they're both on the left side of the screen. That means I either need to wrap my mouse cord all the way around the computer, or get a wireless mouse, which is pretty pricey. It's got a firewire port, which is good, although I don't know if I'll ever use it, and while it does come with its own built in mic, there is no microphone port. I guess none of this upsets me too much, but again, if I'm paying this much extra money, I figure I shouldn't have to deal with little issues like this.

5)Trackpad
The multi-touch trackpad is very handy, and while it's big size can cause it to move around while I'm typing, overall I think it's a very useful addition that I won't get in other laptops.

6) Operating System
Leopard is a tricky system to learn. While I do have a few smaller issues with it, there's only one thing that really annoys me about it- none of my programs work on it. My plan was to partition the hard drive and put all my windows programs on the other side, but so far, that's been ALL of them. What this means is that whenever I want to convert a video, rip a dvd, play ANY kind of game besides the Sims 3, or use any kind of program with an exe file, I need to reboot the computer and start up in the other partition. On the other hand, I can only manage my music, videos and Itouch apps from the mac side, as well as iChat (which I have yet to really test) and ICal. This causes for alot of rebooting, which feels annoying and unnecessary. I also wonder if the mac hardware is causing problems on the windows side, which has not been behaving as well as I would expect it to. I have no real beef to speak of with the mac system itself, besides for the fact that almost nothing I want to do works on it. And I also wonder if the things I DO want to do on it would work just fine on Windows 7, once it comes out. Vista may be a pain in the neck, but is it a bigger pain than rebooting every time I want to do a certain thing?
My video editing experience with iMovie was a disaster. I attempted something very simple- matching a new audio track to a video. The audio track had to be cut and moved around to make the sounds match up, and I spent a good long time trying to find out how to do that. It would import the file, and would allow me to edit when it started and ended, but I couldn't make cuts in the middle or move a small part of the audio around to match it up with the video. I ended up switching over to Windows Movie Maker, which did the job perfectly. I may not know my way around iMovie, but if I can't figure it out, (and I'd like to think I'm pretty intuitive with these things) after a good 15-20 minutes, there's something wrong. Another main reason for getting a Mac was because it was said to be vastly superior in this realm to pc's. If this small experience is any indication, I might be better off going with pc software. Otherwise, maybe I just have alot to learn.

Well, I can't think of anything else. Of course, I won't even think of doing anything till my rebate check for the itouch comes (still not here). But i do think it's worth a serious thought.