APPLE MACBOOK BLACK ( SANTA ROSA ) REVIEW

A magnificent combination, that of Apple's Leopard OS, attractive design and Intel's power platform, Santa Rosa, this notebook has attracted our interest. Is it worth the attention? Lets check it out.

Design
Superb design, the words escape me even before I can detail you with it. Covered in a full black cloak,with only 1” thickness and weighing a little over 2 kgs, this is the most portable notebook I have come across recently. The product has 2 USB ports, 1 Firewire, and Bluetooth 2.0, and WiFi of course. The absence of memory-card slots and Express-slots is a drawback though. A 13.3” screen resides under its hood, which is good in presenting color contrasts and quality, and supports a large range of viewing angles. A 1.3MP webcam, which is integrated into the laptop, makes a good option for video conferencing. The keyboard layout is trademark Apple style, very ergonomically designed and a boon for touch-typists.

Performance
The laptop comes with a 2/2.2 Ghz Intel Core-2-Duo processor, 1 GB RAM, 80/120/160GB of storage space and a combo-drive/DVD-writer depending on the model. The notebook scored a decent score of 3527 in PCMark 05 which can be labeled as good for the notebooks of this category. Multi-tasking sessions did not see a problem at all, owing to the ample memory, storage and good processor power. However, its performance in the visual department was not very encouraging. It scored a meagre 1752 3DMarks, which can be blamed on to the old generation Intel onboard graphics processor. The battery performance is excellent for the notebooks of this category, with the machine lasting nearly 4 and a half hours on near-full load.

Conclusion
The laptop has its share of good and bad, but the good triumphs over the bad. Artistic design, good performance, flawless Leopard OS make this as a viable option, even for those who are planning to shift to Mac from PC, but are reluctant due to the learning curve involved.

Pros
+ Great design
+ Good performance
+ Great battery backup

Cons
- Poor graphics performance
- Not enough USB, card reader slots

Value For Money

Our Rating