portables posts

Filed under: Hardware, Portables, MacBook

Swap a Macbook's glossy display for matte

by Dave Caolo (RSS feed) on Oct 12th, 2009

Users have a love/hate relationship with Apple's glossy displays. Namely, they either love them or they hate them. I haven't used one myself, as I'll be hanging on to my original MacBook Pro until it ceases to work.

Until now, shoppers could get either a glossy or matte display with the 15" MacBook Pro, but not the 13" model. TechRestore has stepped in to do the "repair." For $200, they'll remove your 13" MacBook or MacBook Pro's glossy display and slap a matte screen in its place. The work comes with a 1-year warranty and TechRestore says they'll have your precious back to you within 24 hours of receipt. Note that this requires a trade-in of your existing screen; you won't get it back.

If you have this service done, please let us know how it goes. Enjoy your glare-free computing!

For comparison, RadTech sells an anti-glare film that can be applied over a glossy display. They're available for the 13in MacBook/Pro (unibody), the 15in MacBook Pro (unibody), the 17in MacBook Pro (unibody) and various iMacs. You can get the full list here. The films start at $19.95US each.

[Via Cult Of Mac]

Tags: glossy screen, GlossyScreen, hardware, macbook, matte screen, MatteScreen, portables, repairs

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Portables, Macbook Pro

Reviewing the new MacBook Pro

by Dave Caolo (RSS feed) on Mar 12th, 2008

Blogger Shawn Blanc has written another one of his thorough reviews. This time, it's the new MacBook Pro.

The interesting thing is that he's using it to replace his Mac Pro. Most tech professionals have a primary machine (often a desktop) and a secondary (usually a laptop). After living with this setup for some time, Shawn noticed that the laptop had become his main machine:

"I don't need the Mac Pro. The loss in horsepower is negligible for what I do, and the gain in simplicity cannot be expressed with words. I'm selling the tower and going back to being a one-computer consumer, and connoisseur of fine laptops."

The same thing eventually happened to me. My MacBook Pro is the machine I use most often, and my iMac is the machine I use to sync my iPhone, make iTunes purchases and upload photos. Other than that, it pretty much just sits around.

Shawn goes on to describe setup, migration of his older data and (much, much) more. The whole thing is written in Shawn's comprehensive and readable style. Check it out.

Tags: macbook pro, MacbookPro, portables, reviews

Filed under: Accessories, Hardware, Portables

Win a BookEndz Dock for MacBook from Macsimum News

by Dave Caolo (RSS feed) on Feb 25th, 2008

If you failed to win the BookEndz Dock for MacBook that we gave away last month, Macsimum News (MN) is offering you another chance.

It's almost April, so they're having a good, old-fashioned Easter Egg Hunt. Several articles on the site will be littered with colorful eggs. Keep track of which eggs appear where between today (Feb. 25) and March 18, then email your findings back to the folks at MN. You can read the full details here.

The BookEndz Dock is a cool product. In our previous review, Mat said, "The MacBook model looks particularly nice with a built-in 5 port powered USB hub and both VGA and DVI connectors...and [makes] moving a MacBook (Pro) between locations with many different peripherals quite easy."

Good luck, everyone.

Tags: bookendz, dock, hardware, macbook, portables

Filed under: Hardware, Portables, Rumors

Future Apple Notebooks likely to benefit from flash?

by Mat Lu (RSS feed) on Dec 22nd, 2006

Another cool thing about the transition to Intel is the availability of more information for informed guesses about the future direction of Apple hardware. Since Apple is increasingly using technology also offered to other OEMs it's harder for Apple to keep likely future developments secret for as long as they have in the past. This informed speculation in APC Magazine is a perfect example. They apparently interviewed a Samsung engineer about the new hybrid hard drives that Microsoft is promoting for use with Vista and asked if Samsung had offered the technology to Apple. The Samsung engineer indicated that they had done so but that Apple had turned them down. This leads APC to conjecture that Apple is likely to use Intel's Robson flash chip technology in future notebooks instead. The flash chip module uses flash memory "as a 'smart storage' buffer between system RAM and the hard drive." This offers a number of potential benefits including quicker boot times and better performance on apps that access the hard drive a lot (since flash is faster than a hard drive), as well as improved battery life (since the power hunger motor in the HD is not spinning as much). Let's just hope that Apple gets out in front on this technology like they have with so many others.

Tags: flash, intel, portables, robson

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