Re: Any good repair shop recommendations?

Nathan Koch wrote:
> it'll be the best investment you ever made.

I'd argue that the Intel Macs are a worse investment in some respects.

12" Powerbook G4 -- only complaint was that the battery was recalled and
replaced with a new one 1-year into its life. Got 4.5hr of life during
class use. Keyboard spacebar squeeked a bit. This laptop never had any
significant software issues, beyond Classic sucking the battery down to
2hr if you accidently launched an OS 9 app.

13" MacBook CoreDuo -- processor regularly would get up above 80 C, with
an absolute max of 96 C observed. Could barely get 3hr of life during
class use. Noticable "pop" when listening to audio via headphones
whenever the chipset powered up the audio output. Whining noise when
the CPU was idle. Kernel panic and reboot required once a month. GMA
950 chipset "video card" a joke for anything beyond basic 3D.

15" MacBook Pro Core2Duo -- processor seems to top out at 65 C,
thankfully, although it can get above that rarely (the fans kick in,
loud as they are, and solve this problem). Seems to get 3.5hr of life
if you baby it during class use. Still has the chipset audio pop issue,
although the idle CPU whine seems gone. The real ATI X1600 makes Expose
noticable smoother than the GMA 950 Expose action of the MacBook. The
screen I got has several dead pixels and subpixels, as well as an uneven
backlight (it's going to NeuralNet this week for a look over). It had a
kernel panic within 48 hours of receiving it from Apple.

So, the Pro line seems a decent investment: you get decent hardware, and
it's easy to do a lot with it (the MacBook Pro I have has Linux running
inside virtualization, as well as being able to virtualize Windows for
the odd proprietary app). However, the quality is still below the G4
units, and the system software seems a lot more crash happy. I'd give
it 3 more revisions before you see pre-Intel quality.

OTOH, you can get a great G4 Powerbook for not so much money nowadays,
and Ubuntu finally supports more of the hardware :)
Received on Mon Feb 12 16:07:54 2007