Working Rig Requires Effort & A Few More Bucks (Review From a Computer User, Not a Fanboy), January 17, 2012
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Apple MacBook Pro MD311LL/A 17-Inch Laptop (NEWEST VERSION) (Personal Computers)
Well, on the plus side, I used to believe there was an outrageous "Mac tax," that is, you paid a premium for a MacBook because it was a Mac and that similar hardware (a Windows 7 machine, for example) would cost substantially less. Well, imho the "Mac tax" is still there, but it isn't nearly as high as I thought (on this machine, it's probably a chunk of change somewhere in the $500-600 range, but it is less than the $1,200 I had in mind earlier). Also, the laptop is as nice as all the numerous reviews out there state it is. But....
Hard Fact #1: When you get past the love-fest that surrounds "all things Apple," I've found that Apple's build quality isn't all that much better than numerous other manufacturers I've dealt with (frankly, Sony consistently betters Apple and I've had equal or better results from HP, Dell, and Acer). This MBP Pro is my tenth or so Mac (several MacBooks, several MBP, several Mac Minis, and an MacBook Air (I haven't included my numerous iOS devices)) and while they are nicely put together, they have had their fair share of defects (both cosmetic and functional) that far exceeds the so-called Conventional Wisdom (CW). For instance, this unit arrived with a bad "backlit keyboard" feature (the %-5 key looked as if all the light was radiating out from under it alone and all the other keys remained dim). Didn't spend almost $2,400 to have the %-5 key burn out my optic nerves, so I ordered a replacement. As usual, Amazon CS was great and I had the replacement within 1 business day (with return postage for the defective unit paid for by Amazon).
Hard Fact #2: I also find the Apple community's insistence that they own the GUI world ridiculous. I continue to hear over and over that once you own a Mac, you can mouse your way through life and you'll "never" again have to use the Command Line. Fact of the matter (at least for me) is I find myself using Terminal more in Mac OS X than I ever had to in either Windows or newer versions of Linux. The last time I used the Command Line this much was way back in my MS-DOS days.
Hard Fact #3: Apple fans (encouraged by Apple itself) want you to believe that Mac OS X is like Burger King - you can have it your way. Sorry, Mac OS X remains maddeningly non-customizable. For example, we're now in Lion (10.7) and a user still can't change something as simple as the color of the mouse cursor! In the end, using a Mac is like living life in a pre-school - you can have as much freedom as you want so long as it doesn't exceed what "they" want you to have. One can never can't get past the feeling that with Mac OS X it is "do it Apple's way or no way at all" (incredibly ironic given the fact that Apple pretty much launched with the 1984 Super Bowl commercial which compared IBM to "Big Brother" and Apple to "freedom").
Hard Fact #4: With the standard 4GB RAM configuration this MBP is an absolute dog (especially if you set up your machine with the security features OS X offers). With both the Firewall and the File Vault feature (which offers "on-the-fly" encryption of your hard drive) enabled, I was lucky to keep more than one application running smoothly. If I ran a multi-tab browser session and a photo editing package, the laptop would crawl to a virtual halt. BTW, initial encryption of the hard drive took more than a whopping 20 hours! In the end, I can't think of any user of this MBP model who would not need more RAM right from the get-go. Buying this laptop means buying more RAM immediately! Apple says 8GB is the max. But don't settle for 8GB as 16GB works. Crucial offers a 16GB RAM kit that turns this into a usable laptop. The 16GB kit is not cheap (almost $300 with "2-day Business shipping), but it is worth it. I received the RAM kit this a.m., installed it, the MBP recognized it, and I am now running it. Am thrilled; I now have a laptop worthy of the i7 CPU.
Final verdict? Nice machine, but it's nothing to swoon in ecstasy over (contrary to the seemingly usual reaction to Apple's offerings by the "Death to Microsoft and Other Non-OS X Companies" cult community of mags, rags, and fan-boys). Frankly, I have other machines that I think are nicer to look at, do (more) things better, and are more reasonably priced. But if you want to use OS X (and some of the programs I need to use require OS X), this is a great way to go.
3 stars for the as-shipped OEM config machine, 4 stars for the 16GB, working final setu
