Category: apple

Without much fanfare — I was figuring this would be announced at a conference or such — Apple has upgraded its MacBook Pro line to Core 2 Duo chips.

The MacBook Pros’ Intel Core 2 Duo processor offers 4MB of shared L2 cache, which is up to 39 percent faster than the previous 2.16 GHz MacBook Pro and more than seven times faster than the 1.67 GHz PowerBook G4 running industry standard benchmarks, Apple said. Additionally, it has enhanced Mac OS X to take advantage of the technology advances from Intel's Core 2 Duo processors, resulting in increased performance in professional applications like Aperture 1.5, Final Cut Pro 5 and Logic Pro 7.

An ideal fit for business and creative professionals, MacBook Pro delivers advanced performance including 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM memory expandable up to 3GB, ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 graphics with up to 256MB of dedicated GDDR3 graphics memory, and a double-layer SuperDrive for burning professional-quality DVDs. […]

In the same way that the 486 was the successor to the 386, so is the Core 2 the successor to the Core [1]. Apple purports that the Core 2 is up to “39 percent faster”, but that’s probably wishful thinking. Sure, the Core 2 is faster, but benchmarks indicate that the difference is closer to 15-20% percent, depending on which set of applications are tested.

Still, “faster” is a good thing ;). Speed aside, though, this new generation gets some hardware updates as well. They now come standard with a FireWire 800 port (in addition to a FireWire 400 port) and a 120 GB hard drive. On top of that, they can also accept up to 3 GB of RAM. Sooo tempting!

Lucky enough to have a MacBook Pro, but it’s running hot for you? ZDNet reports on a thread from the Awful forums conjecturing that a poor application of thermal grease may be the culprit.

A post by Interrupting Moss on the Something Awful forums mentions that “it just takes a slight misapplication of thermal grease on a MacBook Pro to make the temperatures skyrocket.”

The amazing part is that if true, Apple techs are assembling MacBook Pros with too much thermal paste because the MBP service manual tells them to! According to MacBook Pro service manual “0.2-0.3cc” of thermal grease should be applied to all three chip mating surfaces. Interrupting Moss however, states that reapplying thermal grease "properly" dropped the running temperature of his MBP by 14 degrees Celsius. […]

At times I’m sad that I only have a PowerBook/G4, but nuggets like this make me feel a little better about waiting for the MacBook Pro “rev 2”.

Ever since reading about heat insulators for laptops, I’ve been thinking about buying one. I did have some concerns about heat potentially being reflected back into the laptop (after all, the heat has to go somewhere). Well, Julie (who wrote the original review at The Gadgeteer) later took some temperature readings and she’s updated her LapPad review.

And, the results were mostly what I expected. In the control setup — without a LapPad — Julie’s PowerBook reached 131° after two hours. And, when testing with LapLogic’s Taku pad (their beefiest model), the laptop reached 138° after two hours. Yeah, it is a few degrees higher, but I could live with that.

I’m set on buying a heat insulator/dissipater of some type, but I didn’t want to rule out other brands either. Here's what I’ve found, including some new models mentioned in the comments from last time:

• Coolpad — it’s handily available at major stores such as Staples and CompUSA but I have some doubts about the cooling efficiency of a plastic product. I mean, it may be fine, but other products look more promising.

• KoolSink — this one caught my eye with its elegant simplicity (it’s just aluminum bent into a wedge). The aluminum would seem to be a good conductor and the laptop can even be tucked into the underside of the wedge for traveling. But then I read their FAQ where they concede that using a KoolSink on your lap “would not be very comfortable”.

• The Lapinator — though it’s obviously a small company, I couldn’t discount the Lapinator (silly name aside). In the end, though, I wasn’t sure that it’d work so well for traveling. Sure, they state that the foam “feet” are compressible when stored in a laptop bag, but my laptop bag is “slot loading” and I’m just not sure if those feet would get snagged on the way in.

• Antec Notebook Cooler — this is another cooler, but with active cooling (fans). And, while it may be suitable for other people, it doesn’t look very portable — and that’s one of my primary requirements for a laptop cooler.

• LapPads — so, the LapPads remain. They’re effective at deflecting heat and they’re portable — that’s about all I can ask for. So, I next had to decide on which model to get. LapLogic has a handy comparison table of their models which helped to narrow it down. I wanted a portable one, which eliminated three. And, of the three remaining, the Norte (the middle one) looks like a good compromise. It has more heat protection than the lowest model but it’s only about 1/3 heavier, whereas the top portable model is over twice has heavy as the low end one.

Now I just have to choose which color I’d like ;). Of course, all the cool metallic colors are only available on the high-end models, but I don’t think that’s enough of a reason for me to settle for a heavier pad. So, I’ll probably order one in a week or two.