Episode BritishMac017
NEWS
St. BRITISH MAC
YE OLDE MAC & MOUSE
Mike Bradbrook's MacBook Pro Review
MacBook Pro 17”

Review by Mike Bradbrook
SUMMARY
Pros: Lovely big, bright widescreen display; no excessive heat (after installing firmware update); silent operation (no mooing, no humming) with 7200 rpm drive; superb performance (although I do have 2GB of RAM instead of the standard 1GB); good battery life; no issues with wireless network reception; 8x SuperDrive with double-layer support; includes FireWire 800; three USB 2.0 ports; built-in iSight; great keyboard that lights up in the dark.
Cons: Only adequate performance with native PowerPC applications (you will see the dreaded Beach Ball of death now and again!). Not using the Core 2 Duo chip (yet!).
I have had the 17” MacBook Pro for two days and am in love with it (much to my wife’s disstain!). I’ve not owned an Apple laptop before but have used G4 iMacs and Mac Minis. I also have been using a HP Pentium 4 laptop and will compare the MBP’s performance to these.

First Impressions
Oh, what a machine! From the packaging to the laptop itself, you feel like you’ve your hands on the best laptop in the world. Now, it may not be that, but the MacBook Pro is close!

Screen
The screen I have is the non-glossy one and I am glad about that! I have been using the HP laptop, which has a glossy screen and you see every smudge mark and reflection if you are looking at the screen from an angle. You also cannot use the glossy screen laptops outside if it is a sunny day. I got no dead pixels and the screen is big and bright without seeming too big.
 Heat?
When I first used the machine, I did notice a lot of heat from the surface, around the area you rest your hands while typing. While it wasn’t uncomfortable, it definitely would warm your hands up on a cold night! Now, with the firmware update installed, there is next to no heat (although, like most laptops, you can feel a good deal of heat on your legs if you actually use the machine on your lap).

Noise?
Nope – the machine is silent. The only time I hear noise is when a CD or DVD is in the machine. I may be getting the benefit of using the 7200 rpm hard drive because I have heard some people say they hear noise with the standard 5400 rpm drive.

Performance
Excellent for native applications: every Universal Binary application opens after one to three bounces in the Dock, even with four or more apps running.
It’s not all good news though:  non-Universal Binaries such as Excel take about nine to twenty bounces! I have been using Microsoft Office at the same time as encoding video and noticed a little freeze while typing on Word and I have seen the Beach Ball of death a few times (for instance, when selecting some menu options in Word) but as long as I was patient and waited, it went away and I was able to carry on working. This delay though, would not be acceptable to many professionals.

 Battery Life
I’ve read some reviews saying people are only getting an hour or two from their battery in normal operation. I can only give my experience and in the two times I’ve let the battery drain completely, I have got over five hours from it. This was while running non-graphics and hard drive intensive applications such as Safari and Mail. Therefore, you should have no issues if you plan to work on Word or Excel while commuting. I will leave it to others to review graphics-intensive apps.

Wireless Reception
I know that Kevin Rose on Diggnation has had problems with his wireless connectivity with the 15” MacBook Pro. I had no issues at all with the 17”. I use a Belkin wireless router and all I had to do was copy my WPA key into the required field on the laptop and I was connected straight away and have been ever since.

Features
The reason I wanted the 17” machine is the lovely big screen but also that I wanted to have an 8x DVD burner because I hate waiting for my projects to burn. An added bonus with the 17” is the Firewire 800 port, which makes backing up to a compatible hard drive so fast.
My wife has been sold on the MacBook Pro ever since she saw the inbuilt iSight camera (which the MacBook also has) and the keyboard, which lights up in dark conditions (this has meant we can watch TV in the dark while I keep playing with the laptop!).

Conclusion
For those who dislike the look of the MacBook (and I am one of those people – sorry!) and can afford this laptop, I strongly recommend it. However, if you can, wait for the new Core 2 Duo chip to be put in it later this year (or early 2007)!
Spoken voice raises the ante
MPEG-1 in VLC from Darryl Fryatt
A bit of a sideways answer to Darren Davies' Quicktime problem from Issue 16 of British Mac:-

a freeware program called "VLC media player" available at http://www.videolan.org/vlc should be able to transcode (and output his quicktime files to MPEG-1 format).
VLC media player is actually designed and described by VideoLan as a cross platform media player (binaries are available for a wide variety of OSs) which is able to play content encoded in a large number of different formats.
An additional feature of VLC media player [accessed through "streaming / export wizard..." from the file menu] is it's  ability to transcode media files from one format to another - although the program points out that this ability isn't guaranteed to be effective everytime you use it, I haven't come across anything (yet) which it couldn't manage.

VLC media player is also able to transcode files to ipod friendly formats as well in the same way if people are looking for something free to enable movies, etc to be played on their video ipod.

Hope this may be of help,
Darryl
Les C
I have a problem with my 17 inch Intel iMac I wonder if you could help me with. The sound is great from the internal speakers, but not loud enough to really enjoy music, so I got some TDK XA60 external speakers. But the sound was even quieter through them. Guessing they were faulty I was about to return them to the store when I decided to try them with my PC - they sounded great, so it must be something to do with the iMac. I have tried other speakers and headphones on the iMac and the results are all the same: even with the sound turned right up the sound seems muffled and pretty faint. Any help would be appreciated.

BTW I'm a recent switcher and Bootcamp will mean that I don't need to keep the PC now.
Mike's keyboard widget with reference to the hash key short cut.
Further to my switcher issues article, here's an excellent widget that shows you all some of the keyboard shortcuts available for the Mac - very useful for newbies and switchers!

http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/reference/xcuts.html
DJ Macintosh
BackityMac
Have you ever wanted an easy way to backup all the important files in your home folder?  Are you tired of sifting through the Library directory to find the folders you need to backup?  Let's say you just want to backup your Apple Mail database file, now all you have to do is click the "Apple Mail" checkbox and click "Backup".  Supported important files include:
- Apple Mail Files
- MS Entourage Files
- iCal Calendars
- Address Book database
- Safari, Firefox, Camino bookmarks
- iPhoto and iTunes Libraries
- iWeb website files
- Home Documents folder
- Full home folder backup.
 
This is not some proprietary system, all backups are placed in a read-only disk image which ensures you can access it on any Mac.  
 
But what is backup without restore.  Choose an image created by this program, and the backed up contents will automatically be detected for you,  Then decided what you want to restore, and click "Restore".  The contents will be placed back into their original directory automatically replacing it's contents.
 
This is the perfect solution for those who want to be able to clone their home directory and replace it on another Mac untouched.  
 
CD or DVD burning is now supported with a registration fee of $10.00
I started looking around your website and have a submission for another Mac TV show.

It's a podcast I do called "Reality Distortion Field TV".  It's a podcast that shows old keynotes that Steve Jobs did when he returned to Apple.  Mainly anything Steve Jobs does.

Here's the link:  http://www.whimsplucky.com/podcast
BRITISH ICON
Dave Brown
Hey great to hear your voice! Love your program. I listen to it here in south central Australia, Adelaide. Love your info and great informal delivery. I hear-by make you an honorary Australian for you services to the colonies (I emigrated here from Sussex in 1959)
Keep up the good work old mate and say G'Day once in a while to your Aussie listeners.
Bill Kerr

(born 1922) is an Australian film and television actor. He was born into a performing arts family in Cape Town, South Africa, but grew up in Wagga Wagga, Australia.
He began working as a child actor in depression era Australia, taking his first major role in The Silence of Dean Maitland, one of Australia's first talking films.
After serving in the Second World War, Kerr moved to England to further his acting career, and during the 1940s he was regularly featured in the BBC radio series Variety Bandbox. His trademark was his catch phrase "I'm only here for 4 minutes..."
In the 1950s, he had a recurring role as an Australian lodger in the BBC radio comedy series Hancock's Half Hour. Initially sharper then Hancock's characterisation, it was developed in to a more dim-witted character who became the butt of Hancock's jokes. Kerr's character might be seen as a forerunner of Manuel from Fawlty Towers, or Father Dougal McGuire from Father Ted. His television appearances in Britain include a 1968 episode of Doctor Who called The Enemy of the World, with Patrick Troughton.
He also made several films in Britain, including The Dambusters and The Wrong Arm of the Law, before moving back to Australia. Although probably best known as a comic actor, and especially for his appearances in Hancock's Half Hour, he has since played a number of serious roles, notably in Peter Weir's films Gallipoli (1981) and The Year of Living Dangerously (1982). He also worked on the Australian stage in the 1980s, in musicals such as My Fair Lady, where he received excellent reviews as Alfred Doolittle. In 2001, he appeared in Australian comedy Let's Get Skase.
His projects overseas lead him to meet his current wife Sandra, with whom he has two children. Kerr now lives in Perth, Western Australia, with his family. Two of his sons Willie Kerr and Wilton Kerr are involved in the performing arts in the Eastern States of Australia
http://www.tonyhancock.org.uk/