MacBooks Get Core 2 Duo
Well, it's official: My Mac lineup (17" iMac and 13" MacBook) is now completely obsolete. I'm not worried that much since the new models are only slight speed bumps and not something more drastic. As seen from the iMac and MacBook Pro bumps, Apple is continuing their long-standing tradition of incremental speed bumps once or twice a year.
Just a short time after their pricier, gray brethren made the jump to Merom, the 13" MacBooks are now outfitted with Core 2 Duo processors. Clock speeds on the MacBooks remain the same at 1.83/2.0 GHz, but the 2GHz chip now has 4MB of L2 cache, twice that of the 1.83GHz chip and the previous Core Duo models.
Not much else has changed, however. Besides the new chip, other incremental upgrades include a bump in the SuperDrive speed from 4x to 6x, and a bump in hard disk space on the 2GHz models from 60/80GB to 80/120GB (white and black models, respectively). The cost of bumping up the hard drive from 80 to 120GB on the white 2GHz is $150, so the black paint only costs $50 as opposed to the previous $150. If you were going to upgrade the hard drive anyway, going for black is almost a no-brainer.
Only time will tell if Apple has fixed the problems that plagued the first-generation MacBooks and MacBook Pros. Even if they haven't, notebook buyers are slightly better off today than they were yesterday.
Technorati Tags: Apple, MacBook, Intel, Core 2 Duo, Merom, notebook, MacBook Pro, iMac
