You won't find a media card reader, however, which has become a common feature on many laptops.
The MacBook supplies you with two USB 2.0 ports, a FireWire 400 port (the MacBook Pro adds a FireWire 800 port), a mini-DVI port (an adapter is required for hooking up a regular monitor), and a slot-loading SuperDrive DVD burner. It's matter of personal preference, but we like the cleaner look of flat keys. The keyboard has totally flat keys (a touch we also liked on the Sony VAIO C150P/B), instead of the slightly concave keys you may be used to.
If you miss the scroll bar present on many Windows laptops, you'll find that the two-finger scroll option works well (run two fingers down the touch pad, and it scrolls like a mouse wheel). Opening the lid, you'll find a minimalist setup, including a power button, a full-size keyboard, a sizable touch pad with a single mouse button, and a built-in iSight camera that sits above the display. It weighs in at 5.1 pounds (5.7 pounds with the AC adapter), and while the difference is only about half a pound, it feels considerably lighter than the 15-inch MacBook Pro. Measuring about 1 inch thick, 12.8 inches wide, and 9 inches deep, the MacBook is small enough to carry around every day and just big enough to comfortably function as your everyday computer.
the Pro model, such as the screen size and the lack of discrete graphics, isn't a deal breaker, the MacBook is a no-brainer for anyone who wants to step up to an Apple laptop or upgrade their older MacBook. These 13.3-inch notebooks, available in the standard Apple colors of black and white, are nearly as powerful as their 15- and 17-inch Pro cousins, and they include a lot of the same features, such as the built-in iSight camera and Front Row remote. The MacBook starts at a mere $1,099, but our review unit is the most tricked-out of the three, offering the faster CPU and a larger hard drive for a still palatable $1,499. There are three MacBook models, one with a 1.83GHz CPU and two with 2.0GHz CPUs. We plan to run more tests to see if we can quantify the performance benefit of extra RAM.Now that the high-end has Intel's Core 2 Duo CPU, it's high time the latest processor technology filtered down to Apple's more consumer-friendly MacBook line. The small subset of Speedmark’s tests that were affected by the RAM upgrade include the zipping and unzipping folders and Microsoft Word scrolling. Unreal Tournament, for example manages to squeeze out 0.7 more frames per second with twice the memory installed. In terms of Speedmark performance, where tasks are run and timed individually, the additional RAM doesn’t make a huge difference, as you can see by the row in the benchmark table where we removed 1GB of RAM from the 2.33GHz MacBook Pro. We mentioned that the MacBook Pro now ships with more RAM – 2GB of memory compared to 1GB in the older models. Only the 17-inch model has a 7,200rpm drive available as a build-to-order option – it’s 60GB smaller than the standard 160GB, 5,400rpm drive, but you knock £70 off the 17-inch model’s £1,899 price tag.) (You might ask yourself: “What would happen if I had a 7,200rpm drive and a faster processor and more RAM?” Well, we can only guess, because the new 15-inch MacBook Pro doesn’t have that option available. Credit the model’s faster processor speed and 2GB of installed RAM. Of course, drive speed isn’t the only factor at play here – the 2.33GHz model scored the best time, even with a 5,400rpm drive. So it’s no surprise that the older MacBook Pro with a build-to-order 7,200rpm hard drive that we included in this test was able to turn in faster times than a new 2.16GHz Core 2 Duo model with a 5,400rpm hard drive. As you might expect, the speed of the hard drive can play a key role in these results.
The only test where the 2.16GHz Core Duo bested its Core 2 Duo counterpart was creating a Zip Archive from a 1GB folder. Comparing the 2.16GHz Core 2 Duo to the 2.16GHz Core Duo, Compressor was 25 per cent faster on the Core 2 and iTunes was 28 per cent faster on the new system. The 2.33GHz MacBook Pro was 40 per cent faster than the older 2.16GHz model at MP3-encoding using iTunes. Compressor 2.3, for example, ran 30 per cent faster on the new 2.33GHz system than on the older 2.16GHz model. Looking at individual tests, some results – specifically ones that taxed either the hard drive or the graphics card – showed smaller performance gains, while other more CPU-intensive tasks saw more substantial improvements, thanks to the Core 2 Duo’s improved processing efficiency.