I’ve had a MAC Book Pro in my life for about a week now. A friend came into some money and was kind enough to lend me enough money to buy a laptop. It was mutually decided that the one condition for said purchase would be that said laptop would have to be a MAC and the added condition that it’d stay in her name so if I hated it, I wouldn’t be a “MAC owner.”
Why? Because I needed a top of the line multimedia machine out of the box and she was tired of me bitching about how I hated MACs.
The purchasing process didn’t help my opinion of the horrible company. But then again, in our three attempts to buy one online (with a custom configuration), events in the MAC world overshadowed everything and made the purchasing process a lot more difficult than it should be. Namely:
- The release of iWORK and iLIFE ‘08
- The iPHONE price drop and rebate debacle
- The release of all the fancy new iPODS
All of these together made ordering online a nightmare. While it wasn’t entirely Apple’s fault, let’s face it, first impressions mean a lot and my first impression of the company was 3 and a half weeks of waiting for the comedy of errors that was the ordering process to complete. After two canceled orders and finding out that the Apple stores do not do custom orders and only have a limited supply on hand (BAH! Thankfully, I didn’t have to drive 200 miles to the nearest one), I ended up with a pretty nice MAC Book Pro.
The specs:
- 2.4ghz Intel Core Duo Processor
- 2GB 667 DDR2 – 2×1GB SO-DIMMs
- 160gb 7200 rpm serial ata hard drive (upgraded from base model)
- Superdrive 8x dvd burner
- Macbook Pro Super Glossy 17″ high-resolution widescreen display (upgraded from base model)
- USB modem (upgrade)
- iWORK ‘08 (upgrade)
- .MAC 1 year subscription (upgrade)
- 3 year Applecare protection (upgrade
I didn’t upgrade the ram because it’s waaaaay too expensive on the MAC site and I can buy it from Newegg or another source and install it myself later on for $200 to $300 less than what those bastards wanted for it.
With the third order, they offered a “free” iPOD video (they’re dumping the older models on unsuspecting customers), that only added a couple of hundred to the final tally. I’m confused about that, but hey, I didn’t make the order and the damn thing is going straight to my friend in Florida who bought the system.
After a week of waiting, the damn thing made it here from Shanghai. I kid you not.
First impressions in the next post. Gotta get ready for haircut.
–Jim