Mikey Pizano writing a MAC review? Also, I want to mention
that this will not be a very long review, so you can consider it to be more of
a hardware review, since that is the important part to me. In my opinion, when
it comes to a computer that runs a standard operating system, such as Mac OS X,
or Windows, I don't feel a huge need to get into the software side of things. I will add some pictures in a separate post at another time.
Yes, believe it or not, I do have some Apple stuff even if I
am not a fan of the company and how they do things. I have a Late 2009 Mini
that I use, and a PowerMac G4 "Quick Silver 2002" that I got before
that. I even used it for awhile, even though when I got it, the Power PC based
Mac was nearly useless. Today, it is even worse, but that is a different story
for a different time. Though I would like to add that I did have an iBook G3 as
well as a PowerBook G4 12", so I did have some Apple laptops before.
They were old though, and, to be honest, were not the most
useful devices. So, where is this going? Well, lets get on with it already! Stop
beating around the bush! To be fair though, you should know where this is going
since I did put it in the title of this post. Early 2008 Black MacBook.
I got this about a week ago, and have been busy trying to
make the best of the hardware. One of the things that I had been working on is
trying to push it a little further by installing Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion,
using MLPostFactor, but I didn't like the way that it ran, so I am sticking
with OS X 10.7 Lion. When I got it, it was running 10.6 Snow Leopard, which
couldn't run some software I need like Trillian. So long story short, Trillian
works on 10.7, so that will be good enough for me.
I did also upgrade the hard drive, much easier on this model
than most, so now it has a 500GB hard drive instead of 250GB. I didn't upgrade
the RAM but this one came with 4GB of DDR2, and that is good enough for me.
So, lets get into the specs first of this model. I am going
to just sum it up, and put a link to a website with the full specs. It has a
2.4GHz Core 2 Duo, which supports 64bit software. The screen is a standard 13
inch 1280x800 as well, so it is nothing special now a days, and even when it
came out, it wasn't anything groundbreaking either.
So, lets look at the ports. Since it is a Mac, they are all
on the left side, so I don't need to go around the entire laptop. You have the
Magsafe charger, LAN port, mini DVI port, Firewire 400, two USB 2.0 ports, line
in, headphones, and a Kensington lock port. The DVD drive is on the other side
of the laptop. On the front, is a sleep LED and an IR receiver for the remote.
On the lid, you have the light up Apple logo as well, which
they removed on new laptops. On the bottom, you have the battery and the
release for it, which needs a coin to be turned. On the battery, it has a
button and some LEDS. Press the button and 5 green LEDS right up and shows you
how much charge remains. This also works when the battery is removed as well.
Open up the laptop, and there is a web camera on top of the
screen as well as a microphone and LED for when the camera is on. You have the
MacBook logo on the bottom of the screen.
Not much else to say there.
On the lower half you have the power button in the right
corner, then keyboard. Under the keyboard, you have the trackpad with single
button. On mine, there is a Marware palmrest protector. So, lets focus on the
keyboard for a bit, since anyone who knows me well knows that the keyboard is
the first thing I care about more than anything else.
This review, which at this point is exactly 724 words. Go
ahead and count, you will find that 724 is the 724th word! So, I am impressed
with the keyboard as it has really nice travel. I am impressed with it, but I
wish that it was backlit but that was only on the Pro models at this time.
Battery wise, I haven't really tested it yet but this one
has a new battery so it should last awhile. Also it is worth noting that the
laptop has N WiFi, as well as Bluetooth. I may post a follow up post to this,
but I am going to end the review here. If I post another article, then consider
this a first impressions.
Thanks Mikey, for writing! :-) Let's keep this blog going!
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