My Dead PowerBook

[Nifft]

She served me well for three years. Then, this weekend, apparently her hard drive and mother board both failed on the same night -- when I awoke, she had frozen, and she could not boot up.

Apple will replace everything (mo'bo, HD, and three missing little rubber feet) for like $300, which is fantastic, but the data looks to be gone for good. It's a good excuse to get a new MacBook Pro ( ), but I will miss my data. A lot. Particularly my campaign notes.

So, I post this on my "gamebox" PC instead of my favorite Mac laptop.

I'm very pleased at Apple's customer service (well, at their quick diagnosis and asking price anyway), but not happy at all that my last backup is over a month old. My own fault really.

Anyway. Moving from a G4 to an Intel-based MacBook Pro, anything I should know?

Anyone have good or bad experiences with their Macs recently?

Cheers, -- N

 

[Aryoche]

Get Applecare. That would extend your warranty to 3 years, and would have covered this failure you experienced.

Bare minimum of a gig of ram. And do all the updates to prevent the "sudden shutdown" syndrome.

Be prepared for a noticeable speed increase going to Core 2 duo over a G4. Some apps aren't optimized yet though, but still will perform faster.

You may (if able) want to wait on the purchase of a new Mac with Leopard being released "spring" of this year. There's a big "event" next month, which -may- reveal the release date.

 

[Mycanid]

Boy ... hate when that happens - i.e. a comp unexpectedly dies and you lose your data. At least there was a copy from a month ago as opposed to never, eh?

Well ... the only thing I can think that MIGHT be an issue would be to check whether or not the notebook you get is one of those that slipped "between the cracks" and has one of those faulty batteries. Probably ordering direct from Apple would (hopefully) circumvent that.

If you happen to know anyone who works for Apple they can usually get you one at a 25% discount or so.

These are the only two things that immediately come to mind. Sorry if not too helpful....

 

[Enforcer]

Yeah, my iBook's hard drive just died, but thankfully I had a very current backup (I backup my Documents folder to my .Mac every morning with an automatic program called ChronoSync, my music was on my iPod--as actual music files in addition to the iTunes syncing, and all my photos were on flash drive). On the bright side, I paid a tech to upgrade my hard drive from 30 to 120GB, so now I don't have to run World of Warcraft off an external drive.

As far as the transition goes, I think the only thing you'll have trouble with is replacing your files, otherwise everything should be pretty much smooth sailing. If you play World of Warcraft, apparently it's like a whole new game once you switch to Intel.

 

[Steve Jung]

If you have important stuff on the hard drive, you can see if Drive Savers can recover it. As far as moving to an Intel Mac, do you use Classic? It doesn't work on Intel Macs. Other than that, I haven't had any problems switching over.

 

[Dimwhit]

You sure the data can't be recovered from the hd?

I've got a MacBook Pro 17" (work computer). Amazing machine. No real advice, other than to enjoy! And yeah, at least 1GB RAM. I've got 2 on this machine, and it screams.

 

[Nifft]

Looks like I can't get the data. Oh well. Mostly pictures and music that I'll miss... and campaign notes.

But the new MacBook Pro (the 15" one with the fast CPU and 2 GB RAM) is nice.

Anything I should know about games? Is it worth getting XP set up on the box?

Thanks, -- N

 

[Enforcer]

For games, it's Blizzard stuff or spending a couple hundred on Windows XP. Good luck!

 

[Rackhir]

Anything I should know about games? Is it worth getting XP set up on the box?

Thanks, -- N

If you already have an XP license (and not just a Dell Restore CD or something similar) then it is currently your only way to run 3d based games. Parallels and the VMware packages won't currently do 3d graphics accelleration. Though hints keep getting dropped that it's coming at some point down the road.

The main advantage to the Parallels or VMware solution is that you can use the Windows under OSX rather than having to reboot and go into XP. They will also work with older versions of windows (95,98,2k, etc...) where as BootCamp (Apple's solution) will only work with XP and (as I understand it) Vista. You can also use them to run multiple versions of windows should you desire (and have the HD space).

The various Home editions of Vista are at least not licensed to run under virtualization (not sure if this means they won't work or just aren't supported). Virtualization is the technical term for how Parallel's and VMware's solutions work. Also from what I understand Vista's DRM restrictions may also cause problems with DRMed stuff under virtualization, since this renders it impossible for Vista "verify" that everything is properly DRMed.

RE: Macbook Pro Experiences - I've had one of the MBPs since they were initially released and it's been a terrific machine. The core 2 Duo chips and the better screens on the current models are just icing on the cake. I've had brief experience with the glossy screen (on a Mac Book) and find it superior to the matt screen on my older MBP, but YMMV. I'd check out your local Apple Store if possible to see which you prefer.

I've not experimented with BootCamp past the initial installation. IF you do go with that, MAKE SURE YOU READ ALL THE INSTRUCTIONS BEFORE PROCEEDING. It is possible to wipe your OSX partition if you are not careful and do not pay attention to what you are doing. I didn't have this problem, but it is possible and easy to do.

WOW runs terrificaly on the MBP since Blizzard implemented Multi-Threaded Open-GL in the most recent major patch (if you care). You should be able to run it at native screen rez with pretty much all the bells and whistles turned on.

Note : There will likely be an update of the MBP in the next two months, but the major improvements are likely to be limited. A modest processor speed bump (it's already damm fast). Better graphics chip (Current one is certainly adiquate for 99% of the games, but a major bump in performance is possible). Better? supporting chipset? I know that Intel's notebook chipset is due to be reved, but it's unclear what if any actual performance improvements are likely/possible. Somewhat of a dark horse prospect is the addition of flash ram as a cache for the HD to speed up access and reduce HD power usage.

 

[ephemeron]

Anyway. Moving from a G4 to an Intel-based MacBook Pro, anything I should know?

Not really -- Apple handled the transition to Intel really well, IMHO. If you used any Classic apps, it'll take a little work to run them on an Intel Mac (this MacOSXHints thread should help); otherwise, there's not much to think about.

The most demanding Windows game I've tried on my MBP (one of the last before Apple switched to Core 2 Duo) is Temple of Elemental Evil, but a Windows-using colleague tells me it's better-equipped than the computer he plays Oblivion on.