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3 out of 4 people found this review helpful
4.0 stars
"Nice Little Package, Needs Stronger Arrow Keys"
Pros: Good Battery Life, Bright Screen, Strong Wireless, Wakes up and goes to sleep quick
Cons: Poor quality arrow keys, bad printer setup interface, tiny speakers, iLife and OS X, take up 10GB
Summary: I had been searching around for a suitable notebook computer to replace my desktop for the last six months and had spent many hours researching notebooks. At first being so familiar to windows I was just going to get a $1000 (cdn) notebook for using at school and home. As I decided to give Apple a look, as to the recomendations of a number of friends. I did my research and found a lot of happy reports.
When I got it running, the setup wizard was simple and in about five minutes I was using it. When installing applications, most of them I just copy and paste to the hard drive and they were installed. This amazed me, a long time windows user, and I was quite used to long setup wizards. It right away connected to the network but wasn't quite compatable with the windows network, the key was turning off the Windows Firewall, the stupid thing that cost me so many hours trying to network the compouters so i could print! I loved the simple interface for opening applications, and immediately caught onto the apple idea of using all the keyboard shortcuts in about two weeks.
I've now had it for about three weeks and am very happy with it. It has only crashed once and runs quite swiftly, a whole lot faster than my fathers 2.8GHZ Celeron! I was disapointed to find that once i installed a number of applications and loaded my 7GB Documents File, including music, that I was left with only 15GB of space left due to Mac os X 10.4 taking up 10GB with iLife! Fifteen gigabytes may sound like a lot but when you tart doing a bit of music recording, take more photos, and try editing a movie, it would disapeer instantly. Thus I recommend upgrading to a 60GB drive, when ordering from Apple. You can get that for about $60 (cdn).
About three days ago i discovered to my dismay that I had some markings on my keyboard arrow keys. Later I discovered that they were actually cracks. I phoned apple and they are sending me a free replacement keyboard, which they didn't ask any questions and just sent it. Now that is decent service, but I'm concerned that it will crack again just from playing those simple games like Nanosaur 2 and Pac Man. It could be a faulty keyboard but either way those tiny arrow keys are fragile!
The speakers are very tiny and quite in an environment with a little bit of noise, but not to worry if you just hook them up to a system at home. Beware of their printer wizard though, it doesn't set up that easy and makes little sense. When i tried plugging in a compatable USB printer it didn't detect it and wouldn't work no matter what I did. That is why I am printing through a home network with a address to the printer. Who on earth knows what a Hp socket printer is or a LPD printer, I am a switching Windows user, like why not have a harware detect wizard or something??
Anyways, overall, aside from my few challenges, the iBook works excellent! It is very quiet an rarely turns on its fan. Unlike other notebooks, I can lie on my bed and work on it without it overheating like a compaq or dell. The handrest heats up overtime, but that is from moving parts. It goes to sleep and wakes up in seconds and is really sturdy. It doesn't creak when you move it and looks gourgeous with the nice little apple lit on the back in low light. Overall an excellent purchase for your money, apple definately spends some time designing these much thinner than most, packages!
