The New Mac arrives

My new MacBook has arrived. A friend bought it with her from the US where I bought it. It is a refurbished model which means I get a new model but with $700 off the price tag when compared to NZ prices.

My first impressions were not good. I cleared everything off the disk and partitioned it (I always like to have my documents separate from the OS and Applications). I installed everything and used the Migration Assistant to move my stuff from my old PowerBook. This last step proved fatal and resulted in many of the applications not working and the machine throwing errors. I gave up and reformatted the OS/Applications partition and reinstalled and manually migrated my stuff. This has been successful.

I had also bought 2 X 1Gb memory boards to upgrade the new MacBook from www.toshcomputers.com. They are an NZ company that competes against mainstream MAC sellers. I got a really good deal on these boards. Only NZ$50... for two!!! However one of them turned out to be dud and for the mean time I only have 1.5GB instead of the 2Gb I am after.

So... some initial impressions:

>It is pretty fast
>The screen is really nice
>I don't mind the changed keyboard
>Having the built in camera is very cool
>The magsafe is very good
>There is a sharp edge to the computer which digs into you when you type. I don't like this and am tempted to take to it with a piece of sand paper
>OS X 10.5 is ok. I guess I will get use to the new look but there is nothing that would sell me on it compared to 10.4. I certainly won't be going out and buying a family pack for my other MACs
>Office 2004 runs more lowly than my PowerBook. This is because it is not an Universal App and runs in an emulation. It does have an nicer look however.
>Frontrow is awaresome. Enough to make anyone switch to a MAC.
>It is lighter than my PowerBook and does not feel quite as robust.

So... so far I am pretty neutral. I think the real test will come when I do my first sermon with it and use Keynotes cool effects. Then we will see how good it is.