Respect Sakura

I haven’t really mentioned this on the site, except the update on the hardware page, but a little over two months ago, I bought myself a notebook. A Dell Inspiron 640m, to be exact (which you may know in the US as the Inspiron E1405). I primarily got it as a portable media & Windows-based coding machine, as well as to test out Vista as a mobile OS. I don’t intend to play games on it, or do anything but rudimentary 3D. CPU and overall system performance is important, but not at the expense of its mobility - hence, I wanted a small, durable notebook that packs enough punch as possible without limiting the mobility factor.

Of course, Apple’s MacBook came to mind when deciding on what to get, but I didn’t really need a mobile Mac desktop, and the 640m was being offered with more RAM and hard drive space for less than the entry level MacBook (plus a pretty cool 2 year even-if-you-piss-on-it accidental cover warranty), so I put my MacFaggotry aside and went for Dell’s choice instead. The standard 1.83GHz model Core Duo MacBook lands you at around $1749 AUD. My Dell came with a 1.83GHz Core 2 Duo (which isn’t a huge leap in performance, and the only additional good thing about it is the x64 support), 1GB of RAM, and a 120GB HD - double the memory and storage of the MacBook, plus a 14″ 1440×900 res screen, and the higher yield battery, all for $1699 AUD.

While I love my new notebook to death, and while the deal was definitely too good to pass up, I always felt that maybe, just maybe, I should have opted for form over function, and stuck with the MacBook instead. My housemate gave me the opportunity to see whether that twinge of regret was right or not.

If you know me personally, or on the ‘net from somewhere, you’ll know that I’m a pretty big MacFag. I love OS X to death, and if it had better media playback solutions, if the Mac Pro supported off-the-shelf PCI Express video cards under OS X, and if I could run my games under it, then I’d happily sell all my assorted shit, and just stick with a Mac Pro, maybe the Mac mini as a secondary system, and a MacBook to suit my portable needs. However, the reality of the situation is that media playback continues to suck on OS X, games are all for Windows, and despite there being Mac versions of about 98% of the stuff I use (aside from media and games), the 2% of stuff that isn’t keeps drawing me back, or some of that 98% is just developed better under Windows. There are the security concerns, but I’ve always been levelheaded, and never had any kind of serious security breach under Windows to begin with - and Vista looks more and more like it’ll address pretty much all the traditional attack vectors where these things come in, anyways.

However, an OS comparison isn’t the point of this thread - my only intention is to explain where I’m coming from. I like OS X more, but Windows suits my functional needs a lot better. Hence, I’m stuck with both Macs and PCs, and this will be unlikely to change in the apparent future. Thankfully for my wallet, my Mac mini pretty much handles everything I need from the Mac, and with its CPU and RAM upgrade, it should last me well into the future. The only limiting factor is hard drive space - but this is true whether I have 80GB, or 800GB (and probably will continue to be when I reach 8TB).

Anyways, back to the original point of this thread. I got suckered into a Dell notebook, and still lusted after a MacBook, despite for one, welcoming my new Dell overlords. The interesting part of this whole situation is when my housemate, Braden, got himself a 2GHz MacBook, and asked me to install Windows XP on it for him, plus treat it with my special codec recipe of goodness. After playing with it a bit, I discovered that I no longer regretted my Dell purchase, and discovered new things to like about my Dell. The shocking truth, ladies and gentlemen? For a Windows notebook, the MacBook sucks. In fact, many aspects about the suckage are hardware related, and as such, is OS independent, but the Windows side of things makes it all the more obvious.

First suckage? Damn, momma.. she be runnin’ hot. An hour of running off the battery, and it’s impossible to seat this thing on your lap, lest you’re naturally resilient to heat, and don’t plan on fathering children. It’s not like I was doing anything particularly strenuous on it, either.. just some wireless web browsing. The Dell doesn’t even get comfortably warm in my lap, after a few hours of streaming H.264 MKV’s off of Saber, or installing software. It’s not as white, uniform, and pleasant to look at as the MacBook, but it’s certainly a lot more functional and better thought out in terms of thermal issues. I like eye candy as much as the next guy, but not to the point where it affects the machine in such a detrimental manner. We’ve all heard about the horror stories of thermal paste bukkake going on inside these things, but I really don’t think taking the MacBook apart, and applying new thermal paste in a saner manner is a proper fix for the issue. It’s too damn hot, Apple. You need to address that, even if it takes a recall, or it makes the next model slightly less aesthetically pleasing. People need to be able to use the damn things, and should expect it to last slightly longer than maybe two or three years.

Second suckage? Worst. Speakers. Ever. I don’t know how the MacBook Pro compares, but the speakers in the MacBook are tinnier than an Outback shithouse. I honestly never realised how good the Dell’s builtin speakers were, until I was able to compare them to the MacBook’s speakers. In fact, the whole notion of comparing these two notebooks never crossed my mind, until I was able to draw a direct comparison between the speakers on my Dell, and Braden’s notebook. The MacBook’s speakers are so shitty; they inspired me to write this post. That has to say something. Granted, my 640m’s speakers would probably make audiophiles break out in hives, and certainly don’t compare to a $400 set of Logitech 5.1’s, but it’s definitely capable of being listened to. They’re probably as good as a cheap or affordable stereo television’s speakers. Granted, I primarily use my notebook with a set of headphones if I’m using them for media, but it’s nice to be able to play back stuff for other people and have their ears not bleed. Here’s a protip, Apple: If people who aren’t initially MacFags go out and buy a MacBook, they’re doing so because it’s like having a larger, widescreen iPod with additional computer stuff tagged on. It’s obvious as hell that the 640m was designed with media playback in mind, in addition to portability. Try to think of portable media playback a bit more when you develop the next version.

Third suckage? Battery life in Windows XP. Now.. this last one could be a bit tricky, because Vista might be delivering on its promise of better mobile features. Furthermore, the MacBook has a bunch of specialised hardware and logic within that XP may not be able to utilise to save power. Also, I did buy my Dell with a “supersized” battery - I know the normal one is pretty crap, and I wanted this notebook to be able to remain as mobile as possible. However, with the limited testing and messing around we did, we generally have somewhere between 2 to 3 and a bit hours under Windows XP on the MacBook. My Dell, which has been used extensively since I got it, averages out about 6 hours of general to medium-heavy usage, and up to 8 hours of light usage. I haven’t used XP much on this notebook, so I honestly don’t know what the norm is - the Dell has pretty much been running various Vista builds since the day I got it. From pre-RC1 (54xx something), up to RC2 (5744) currently.

Let me reiterate. Web browsing, a bit of IM, a fair amount of XviD/H.264 playback at decent (generally 640 by whatever or greater) resolutions, and to top it off, wireless usage, nets me at least 6 hours of battery life. I don’t normally start taking the brightness down, until it starts to get within the last hour or two of usage - and that can usually stretch out the time a bit more. I haven’t been a mobile user for all that long, but I’m confident in that being pretty damn fucking good power management in any man’s language. Maybe Vista really does have magic voodoo in it that makes notebooks with okay battery lives suddenly obtain fucking awesome battery lives, or maybe XP just sucks as a mobile OS. I’ll be happy to do more extensive OS X testing of the battery life if demands call for it, but my original purchase intentions were for a Windows based system, and due to compatibility issues with Vista and Apple hardware, XP would probably be what I’d run on it.

So.. for a saving of $50, I not only got twice the memory, twice the storage, better expansion support, an integrated media card reader (which is awesome for using with ReadyBoost under Vista), and a processor with x64 support and marginal performance increases in specific applications (but not really anything you’d see in the real world), but I also got far superior thermal management, far superior speakers and media capabilities (and by that, I mean the higher res screen and handy media buttons - not the shittastic Dell software), and possibly far longer battery life. What does the MacBook have that this system doesn’t? Well, it’s more aesthetically pleasing, and it’s a mobile OS X platform. Oh, and Gigabit Ethernet support. That’s it. I love Apple hardware as much as the next MacFag, but form rarely ever wins over function for me. It can’t just look better, it has to be better.

I’m sorry to say, but the Inspiron 640m? It just is better. That may not win me a lot of eCred with the blogosphere circle jerk crowd, but at least I’m still capable of producing offspring past that one hour mark. Feel free to discredit my findings and call me a faggot below.