

Macbook refresh gets official with 10-hour battery - djcapelis
http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/18/macbook-refresh-gets-official/

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ComputerGuru
I'm just still sore about having to wait another 8 or 9 months to get a
MacBook WITH A 13" SCREEN that has a CPU from this century.

2.4GHz Core 2 Duo in their latest offerings.... while all the competition is
flashing around i3s and i5s.

Steve Jobs reply: We figured people care more about game performance and
battery life.

Well, since when is "gaming" what people get Macs for!? I'd rather you sped-up
my Photoshopping and my Compiling than my playing of ports of games from the
early 90s.

~~~
moe
Personally I'm actually happy about their decision (got one of the new
13"ers), battery life is more valuable to me than CPU performance.

Ideally they'd offer choice (as unlikely as that is for apple) between 10h
batter time and i5 CPU.

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ComputerGuru
I was really hoping to upgrade my now 3-generations ago Unibody 13"er because
it's just too damn slow. Back then, I opted to pay the extra bucks and get the
2.4GHz Core 2 Duo for the "premium" model - it's so sad that that same CPU is
_still_ in the new models (albiet as the "base" and a 2.6GHz as the
"premium").

I understand their conundrum though, it's not their fault.

The 13" design simply doesn't have room for a standalone graphics card, so
they need to use an integrated video card. Due to licensing battles between
nVidia and Intel (you'd think they'd give it a break in the face of the joint
AMD-ATI competition), there are no Core iX motherboards manufactured with an
nVidia chipset at the moment. So it's either dump the iX or dump nVidia, and
they (sensibly) picked to remain with the nVidia platform.

Makes you really hate the stupid politics power plays done that prevent users
from paying for and getting the best.

~~~
lowkey
Instead of upgrading the notebook, you may want to consider switching to a
solid-state drive. In terms of real-world performance boost, an SSD simply
can't be beat. It's like upgrading to 60 or 120GB of RAM for <$300.

I am not convinced that most MacBook users are CPU constrained. SSD FTW!

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shpxnvz
He's not the typical MacBook user; he's worried about speeding up compiling.

I recently switched out to a fast SSD and I can say this with certainty -
compiling was and continues to be CPU constrained, at least for the code I
spend the most time compiling.

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ComputerGuru
Thanks - that's exactly my issue. I have compiling which takes up most of the
CPU, but the amalgamation of all the other software each taking up to 10% in
the background is what kills.

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adolph
The battery life sales point is an interesting differentiator. By my quick
survey it looks like most laptops get about 4-5 hours of battery life now a
days.

The non-user-replaceable battery seems to be a gamble that hasn't hurt them in
the market.

~~~
bk
Some ultra low voltage processor models get around 10hrs of battery life as
well. The Asus UL series get really good battery life, at least under Windows.

I have a UL80vt running Ubuntu 9.10 and get around 5hrs on that with the
screen at full brightness (b/c brightness control only works with reboot). It
also uses the nvidia dedicated graphics afaik (it has hot-switchable dual
graphics under windows).

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dlevine
I just started using a 2.4ghz 13-inch mbp for work. My personal machine is a
mid-2007 white macbook (2.16ghz, 4GB RAM). I do like the Aluminum case, but
the machine really isn't noticeably faster than the old one. Not that the old
one is slow by any means. I think I've decided to hold off one more generation
(bought myself a magic mouse and wireless keyboard to get rid of some of the
gadget craving).

For the guy who said he needs something faster to run lots of apps, none of
those apps need to run in the background, so you shouldn't be CPU limited.
Maybe you just need more than 4GB of RAM. I think your machine can fit 6GB...

