Apple MacBook Pro 15.4 in. (MA610LL/A) Notebook

I live in a household that has, at the moment, five Apple products. Five. Three iPods and two Apple MacBook Pros reside here. And if I have my way, we'll never have another one again.

::: The Specs :::

The Apple MacBook Pro was the "top of the line" notebook from Apple. Available in 15" or 17" display models, at the time I ordered my laptop (June 2007), you had the choice of a 2.16 or 2.33 GHz dual-processor model. Current configurations give a choice between 2.2 or 2.4 GHz.

My Apple MacBook Pro came with a 15.4" display (at up to 1440 x 900 resolution), 2.33 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 2 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM, and a 180 GB hard drive. The notebook features a built-in webcam (iSight), two USB ports, one Firewire 400 and one Firewire 800 port, and a slot-loading SuperDrive. It lacks a media card reader, but has built-in Airport Extreme 802.11 a/b/g and Bluetooth allow connection. Video output is via the DVI port, but a DVI-to-VGA cable is included, along with a remote and adjustable-length power cable. It came pre-installed with OS X Tiger and iLife.

::: I Loved It, Until... :::

At first glance, the Apple MacBook Pro is gorgeous, with it's sleek brushed aluminum case, light-up Apple logo behind the display and light-up keyboard (for working in the dark!) The built-in touch-pad mouse is out of the way enough that you can actually manage to NOT touch it when you are typing, and the keyboard is set far enough up on the laptop that you have enough room to use the rest of the base as a wrist-rest.

Connectivity is a breeze, and I had a little trouble at all setting up the Apple MacBook Pro on my home network, which, until my laptop arrived, was a PC-only network run off a Linksys router. Apple products often balk at WEP, but once we switched the network over to WPA-2, we never had another problem with network connectivity.

The first two things I noticed, however, were the memory needs and the built-in speakers. The Apple MacBook Pro is a memory hog, and had two slots, but would recognize no more than 3 GB of RAM, even if you used the slots for two 2-GB cards. Even with the memory upgraded to 3 GB (through a much less expensive third party vendor rather than the price-gouging Apple engages in to upgrade RAM when you order), the machine would often bog down when running a couple of programs in addition to known memory hog Firefox.

The built-in speakers were also so bad as to be practically useless. The sound was tinny, at best, and I found that any time I wanted to watch a movie or listen to music, I would end up using my headphones, limiting how much I could actually enjoy my iTunes library when home working with the kids during the day, since I have to keep an ear out. The display was very pretty, however, nearly making up for the horrible sound. Upgrading to the 17" HD model was even better; my ex-husband got that one, and the difference was amazing.

::: Service Just Plain Sucks :::

I learned a valuable lesson with my MacBook Pro Notebook: don't bother shelling out for the extended Apple Care Protection Plan. In the fine print are a host of reasons that Apple can deny your warranty claim, as I discovered when the SuperDrive died on me less than a year into owning the laptop.

Something you quickly learn as a power user of a pretty aluminum notebook is that aluminum is a pretty darn soft metal, and when you run the laptop nearly all day and the laptop gets hot enough to burn your legs if you actually have it on your lap, the metal will eventually warp. It also scratches very easily. If you happen to take your laptop into an Apple store to have their "geniuses" look at it and it shows warping and/or scratching, guess what? They can deem it "damaged" and deny your warranty claim. I was told that the minimum charge to replace my SuperDrive would be $1200. Considering that I could buy two nicely-tricked-out PC laptops for that price, I took my laptop back home and replaced my SuperDrive myself. (Note that the second you open the laptop case yourself you are essentially voiding the AppleCare warranty, but since they already weren't going to honor it, I figured I had nothing to lose).

The Apple MacBook Pro Notebooks also had a horrible keyboard design; for writers who regularly bang the heck out of a keyboard, it wasn't unusual to break keys off. I ended up having to replace several keys and finally the entire keyboard (again getting parts from a third-party vendor and doing the repairs myself) before the laptop finally gave up the ghost well before its three-year AppleCare warranty should have been honored.

In short, I don't think that the aluminum-case MacBooks are worth the obscene cost, and I'd be wary of buying one, even with a decent price on a refurb. When my Lappy finally died, I downgraded to a refurb unibody MacBook and found that most of the issues: the heat, the horrible keyboard design, and even the tinny sound of the speakers were improved with a lower-model-end product. My old MacBook Pro Notebook has probably been melted down to make earrings or something, and I'm sorry I even spent the money on it. It was a pretty laptop, but not designed for the wear and tear of a nomadic freelancer's "office."