Home > Consumer Reviews > Apple MacBook MB466LL/A 13.3-Inch Laptop

A great notebook! It is light and portable, and has a great design. I switched for Windows Vista(AHH) to a MacBook with Snow Leopard (awesome!).This mac has fantastic graphics, and a wonderful display, do not regret buying this! It s absolutely perfect! It is blazing fast too! I love the mac operating system!
Dont live with PC, get a MacBook! :)

The aluminum enclosure designed for this computer is worth every penny. After 6 months of reliable usage and ownership, my Macbook was dropped on its corner edge onto a marble floor from a kitchen counter height. My Macbook slipped out of a Booq laptop bag that was not properly zipped when I attempted to sling it over my shoulder. I swear I saw it fall in slow motion....After defibrillating my heart when it stopped at the time of the "crunch", I picked up the computer and restarted it. HALLELEUIA - STILL WORKED! There was sufficient cosmetic damage from the drop that makes it unsightly for resale (1/4 inch chipped screen in upper right corner, dent from impact visible at the corner of the screen and the corner of the base). However, I don't intend to sell it, and I will use it until it dies, like my previous 12" Powerbook workhorse.

If you are comparing the aluminum unibody to the white polycarbonate macbook- the polycarbonate would've shattered from that same fall. The "dent" reflects the force absorbed by the aluminum enclosure. Spend the extra $100 to $200 for piece of mind.

My point is, no one expects to have their laptop "drop" onto a hard surface from a 4 foot height. Rest assured, the extra $$$ you spend to ensure your computer can survive accidental falls, is worth it.

Aluminum unibody over white polycarbonate- this is a no-brainer

It's mine and no it's not for sale.
Let me first say that this is the exact same unit Apple is currently selling as the 13" MacBook Pro excepting 3 things: SD Card reader (yawn), sealed in battery (yuck) and FireWire :).
I bought mine after the update despite it's lack of FireWire because it has a user changeable battery, which the MacBook Pro lacks.
Excepting the lack of FireWire, this is IMHO the best Mac Laptop made & if you can find a new one or lightly used one get it.

I switched to Mac last January, and now, one year later, I'm still very satisfied. My Macbook 13.3 has run perfectly, frozen a total of maybe 2 times in an entire year, and perfectly interfaced with bizarre / antique printers, routers, and external hard drives here in China. It runs cool and silent. It's sleek and light and makes for easy packing. What really blew my mind was, after 9 months of use, having to ask a friend to google "Ctrl-Alt-Delete" for mac because I needed to force quit a non-responsive program for the FIRST TIME! What a stark contrast with my (also very decent) Thinkpad at work.

The experience of buying a laptop from Amazon was great as well. It turned up days early, packaged together with my software purchases, and at a steep discount over the Apple Store.

I just bought my first Apple, a Macbook Pro (13"). Nice piece of artwork. But I'm shocked by the catastrophic font display and apparent lack of adjustment options (yes, seen the font smoothing option but the result's a joke with or without). I've read many posts on how apple's rendering is different from Windows, how exactly they manage to put so much thought into creating such a poor result, and how people prefer one or the other. But this seems just plain wrong -- I can't believe that there's so many people out there who, out of pure love for original font geometry (or for love of Apple), are willing to sacrifice readability/usability.

There's some other disappointing surprises for someone who switches from Windows:

- no easy window maximise/minimise, maximisation only via green button that maximises to the layout Apple considers best (I'd often prefer a different window size, mostly full screen, particularly on 13"). That means you end up using the mouse & moving/changing windows all the time.

- very inefficient handling of screen real estate. Lots of permanently displayed info / top menu rows etc that you really don't need most of the time and that cut down usable screen area. Maybe I just haven't found it yet, but I don't see an easy way to switch to full screen.

- sharp front edge on the unibody... that's very uncomfortable after a short while. Somewhere else I read that for Apple, clearly function follows form. That strikes me as spot on now...

- Yes, you can soft-double-tap the large mouse pad, but if you decide to mechanically click it (you can do that anywhere on the pad), the sound of the mechanics is annoyingly loud.

Bottom line: I feel mislead by a good amount of (unjustified) enthusiasm of the Apple fans around me. Next time I need to satisfy an esthetic urge, I'll go and buy a new watch instead. Going Apple doesn't seem to be the right reaction if you're unhappy with Microsoft.