Ditch Explorer
You’ve probably heard about how China has been spreading malware and using it to hack in to email accounts to spy on activists, journalists, and god knows who else. Of course, this should not be surprising: the Chinese government has quite a track record of acting like complete pricks and never facing consequences because everyone is afraid of losing access to a market with more than a billion customers and a very cheap labor force. So, old news, we all knew China’s doing crap like this.
What’s more immediately interesting are some reactions to this. France and Germany, for example, have begun urging their citizens to dump Internet Explorer–all versions–in order to avoid security breaches like those committed by China, which exploited security holes in the browser to invade people’s privacy. Of course, I fully support this; Internet Explorer is the Worst Browser Ever, with issues not just concerning security, but also concerning standards–IE completely fails standards tests, and not just by a little; whereas Safari gets 100% and Firefox gets close to that, IE scores in the 20-30% range–even including IE8 and the as-yet-unfinished IE9.
In short, IE is a bad joke and should be abandoned by everybody for Safari, Firefox, Chrome, or Opera. That said, to be completely fair, if IE hadn’t been around, China would have probably just hacked a different browser. None are inviolable, but IE is known to be particularly open to attack.
An amusing postscript to the story: Microsoft is now advising users to drop not only IE, but Windows as well! Of course, they’re not telling them to drop Microsoft products entirely, just old versions–they advise upgrading from IE 6 to IE 8, and from Windows XP to Windows 7. In other words, they are using this attack to sell their new OS.
However, an upgrade is indeed called for:
I’ve been considering buying a MacBook and I was wondering if you had any experience with the newest MacBook (not Pro) model? Specifically, would it be ok for me to walk into a Apple Retail Store and buy the basic 250gb HD and 2gb RAM model, or should I customize it at the Apple Store online to get the max 4gb of RAM? All I plan on using it for is iWorks apps, iLife apps, and, maybe, Scrivener.
^ 2GB is fine. Amazon is the best place to buy a Macbook IMO.
Also, if you need to upgrade the RAM it’s very easy to do anyway.
K.:
As a general rule, you should upgrade the RAM. It will expand your ability to use to computer today, and will extend the computer’s usable lifetime as future software demands more memory. So many people throw out computers and buy new ones because it has gotten too “slow,” when actually a big part of the problem is just not enough RAM over time.
As for the model itself, I haven’t had any experience with the newer white Macbooks directly, but the specs are sound. Mostly, it lacks the aluminum enclosure, SD Card Slot, and Firewire port. The Macbook page at Apple does not claim dual-monitor support, though it has the same graphics chips as models that do, so that might just be sloppy wording in the specs, I don’t know. Aside from that, the specs are virtually identical to the low-end MacBook pro for a few hundred bucks more. So if you won’t miss the Firewire, SD, or case, then it’s a good choice.
As for where to buy, that depends on where you live: is there sales tax in your state? If not, then by all means get it from the Apple store–whichever has the ability to upgrade your RAM (does the retail store not have the 4GB RAM option?).
If, however, you live in a state with high sales tax (like CA, which usually is over 9%), then it might be cheaper to get it from a third party seller. For example, macconnection.com has this:
http://www.macconnection.com/IPA/Shop/Product/Detail.htm?sku=10777420&cac=Result
It’s the same price as the Apple Store after you up the RAM to 4GB, but if you live outside of New Hampshire (where that retailer is located), then you don’t pay sales tax (check shipping prices, though–I think macconnection has free shipping for this item).
If you buy a 2GB Macbook with the intention of swapping out the RAM yourself, be careful–Apple has, for several years now, slipped in a tricky little disincentive: the 2GB ‘book has 2 RAM slots filled with 2 1GB RAM chips; to upgrade to 4GB, you must throw away the 2GB and buy a whole 4GB set. Years back, Apple used to just occupy one slot with a high-capacity chip, making the upgrade simple and cheap (just add another chip); in order to sell more RAM themselves, they switched to the 2-chip scam, one of the things I disliked about their setup.
4GB of RAM for the Macbook costs around $90 or so from 3rd-party dealers, so it’s really not a great deal to do it yourself. Amazon is usually great, but does not have that model with 4GB RAM built-in; the 2GB model is sold for $44 lower than list, so potentially you could buy from Amazon, buy 3rd-party RAM, swap it yourself, and save maybe fifty bucks–IF there’s no sales tax, which with Amazon, I think there is, but you can check. Also, it depends on how much trouble you want to go to.
Hope this helps!
Luis
@Luis
Thanks, Luis. Really appreciate it.
As annoying as the the memory slots issue is for Apple, I think Toshiba is way more annoying. On some of their massive, full-sized keyboard, desktop replacement models, the machines support 8gb of RAM. However, the memory configurations are 2x1gb, 2x2gb and 1x4gb+1x2b. You can’t even buy the machines with 2x4gb! (Not to mention some of the annoying stuff they pull with their opensolaris, a.k.a avoid the windows tax, models).
I’ll have to check to see if the retail Apple stores carry the 4gb model. I was under the impression that the “most popular configurations” weren’t SKUs, but if Mac Connection and Mac Mall carry various models, maybe the Apple retail store does as well.
@Luis
Thanks, Luis. Really appreciate it.
As annoying as the the memory slots issue is for Apple, I think Toshiba is way more annoying. On some of their massive, full-sized keyboard, desktop replacement models, the machines support 8gb of RAM. However, the memory configurations are 2x1gb, 2x2gb and 1x4gb+1x2b. You can’t even buy the machines with 2x4gb! (Not to mention some of the annoying stuff they pull with their opensolaris, a.k.a avoid the windows tax, models).
I’ll have to check to see if the retail Apple stores carry the 4gb model. I was under the impression that the “most popular configurations” weren’t SKUs, but if Mac Connection and Mac Mall carry various models, maybe the Apple retail store does as well.