The New MacBook
Well, it’s finally out. Starting at $1100 with a dual-core 1.83 GHz Core Duo CPU and a 13.3″ glossy widescreen LCD at 1280 x 800 pixels. The mid-level model comes with a 2GHz Core Duo, with a SuperDrive instead of a Combo Drive, for $200 more. The next higher model, strangely, costs another $200, but the only thing you seem to get different is 20GB more on the hard drive and a black enclosure. Obviously, the mid-level model is the best deal. In fact, it’s pretty close in specs to the lower-end MacBook Pro, for a lot less. Compare this to my PowerBook G4, which I bought less than a year ago; mine cost almost double the new MacBook, and will be almost half as fast. For a consumer-end laptop, the new MacBooks have a respectable amount of power.
Of course, you have to add RAM (though the on-board 512MB is not horrible, at least 1GB is more like it) and pay $200 for Windows XP. That would make the mid-level model $1600 for a powerful laptop with Mac and Windows combined under the hood. Not too shabby.
I think Apple is crazy for not selling a little plastic thing that connects this computer to the back of an lcd monitor and external keyboard/mouse so that you can build a “deskop” like thing easily. They have docks yet they take up much space.
The last iBook I bought included a plastic connector for an external monitor in the box. If they don’t include one with the MacBooks, it’s very likely you can pick up a cheap third party one.
The mini-DVI-to-S-Video/RCA connector, if it does not come included, is about twenty bucks extra.
Also, I made a correction to the main post–I called the mid-level model the “high end” model. Now corrected.