About This Mac » macbook pro

Which MacBook Should I Buy?

iChris — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 17:22:33 +0000

Jennifer asks:

This ol’ laptop (Dell) of mine is slowly dying (CMOS battery, CD drive is dead, other wonky stuff). So, of course, I’m pondering getting a MacBook before I head back to Africa in February since I’ll be gone for four months. I guess my biggest question is MacBook vs. MacBook Pro (I like the glowy keyboard in Pro) … but for a basic/average user, do I need what the Pro version has to offer and is it worth the extra cost? I guess the other thing I wonder is would you recommend a refurbished one from the Apple website or stick with a new one?

I’d say that most people really only _need_ the MacBook. Especially the new (as of this posting, October 2008) models. Unless you’re desperate for the larger screen. For the price, I think the MacBook is the way to go these days.

The major feature that it’s lacking is a firewire port which is what you’d use to hook up older (and some current) tape-based video cameras. Pretty much anything else will be able to hook up through a USB port.

There’s this comparison page Apple has for their MacBooks. There is also a great guide over at macrumors.com that can walk you through most of the features on both the MacBook and MacBook Pro models.

The refurb store is just as good as the “new” store. You get a 1 year warranty with most purchases and the machine has been checked out by Apple to be good as new. Although I don’t think they have any of the new (October 2008) MacBooks in there yet.

Are you stuck?

Daryl — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 03:44:00 +0000

Kendra asks,“How do I eject a CD or DVD on my Mac when pressing the eject button doesn’t work?“

This is a great question that I myself had to search apple support for the answer when I first had this problem on my first mac. Especially when you think that a stuck disc is going to mean sending your machine in for repair. Firstly, remember old CD and DVD drives from those PC computers you used to use and how when I disc wouldn’t eject you would grab a paper clip and bend it straight to press on that magic manual eject button? Don’t try that on a mac, cause you will search forever and never find such a button. In fact you might damage something. The solution is easier than it might seem.

In general a CD or DVD can be ejected on a Mac (MacBook or MacBook Pro) using the physical eject button or from the finder without any problems, but occasionally this don’t work and the disc icon might disappear from your Desktop and you can’t get the disc out of your computer. However, there is a trick you can try to extract the stuck disc.

Restart your Mac
After you hear the startup chime, press and hold your trackpad button
After a minute or so and you think nothing is gonna happen the disc ejects
Release the button once the disc ejects

99% of the time this will work. The other 1% has a more advance solution that I won’t publish. So if it doesn’t work for you. Just contact us and we’ll walk you through it.

How Can I Figure Out My Hard Drive Size?

iChris — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 22:01:16 +0000

Alvin writes:

How can I find out what size my Hard Drive is on my 15inch Macbook Pro.
Its processor speed only says 1.87???THANKS

One way to do this is by looking for the Macintosh HD icon on your desktop like this:

Right click (or CTRL-click if you’re using a single button mouse or a laptop) on the icon and you should see this:

Left click on ‘Get Info.’

The screen that appears next should have a bunch of information about your hard drive, and in the ‘General’ section (you may have to click the triangle to open up the information) you should see this:

The capacity on this computer states 111.47GB which is actually a 120GB hard drive (visit this wikipedia entry for an explanation of why the difference in sizes under the section titled ‘Consumer Confusion). It’s got 27.81GB available and 83.66GB used.