Apple MacBook (White 13-inch)

Full Review

The entry-level white 13-inch MacBook is the least expensive laptop in Apple's MacBook family, and ideal for consumers looking for a lower cost Mac experience. What's more, Apple has revamped its internal hardware somewhat for better performance.

While keeping the same price tag and the white polycarbonate shell, Apple has quietly bumped the speed of the laptop’s Core 2 Duo processors from 2GHz to 2.13GHz and increased the hard drive capacity from 120GB to 160GB. The white MacBook now includes faster 800MHz DDR2 memory than its last iteration, which used 667MHz DDR2 RAM. These updates amount to an overall improvement in performance.

Aside from the outward appearance , these updates to the white MacBook bring its specs up to par with the discontinued aluminum MacBook. The white MacBook includes 8x DVD-burning drives, 160GB hard drive, and 2GB of RAM. It has a glossy 13.3-inch LCD display, with a maximum screen resolution of 1280x800 pixels, and a non-glare option is no longer available for the white MacBook. And it also comes with Nvidia GeForce 9400M graphics which shares 256MB of video memory from the system RAM. One good thing about the white MacBook is that it still has a FireWire port on its chassis, and support for the older mini-DVI port. It sports a chiclet-styled keyboard which is a treat to work on, and the touchpad is pretty good as well. Although it may not stand up to comparison with the elegant unibody design of MacBook Pro, the white polycarbonate shell of the entry-level MacBook is a throwback to the traditional all-white look of the MacBook.

Using Macworld’s overall system performance benchmark, Speedmark 5, we found the new 2.13GHz white MacBook to be approximately 6.5 percent faster than the 2GHz white MacBook it replaces. The new model had faster test times across the board, including about an 8 percent speed up in Photoshop times and iTunes MP3 encoding scores. Cinema 4D was about 5 percent faster on the new white MacBook. In terms of battery life, we found that the white MacBook could play a QuickTime movie at full brightness for 3 hours and 22 minutes, 38 minutes longer than the aluminum MacBook and 28 minutes longer than the MacBook Pro, when the pro system was set to use its battery-saving lower powered graphics.

If you're not a fan of OSX, Boot camp (which earlier had to be launched through a disc) now comes built-in to the system, allowing you to install Windows Vista and dual-boot into it. What's more, we found Apple's OSX install disc has all the necessary hardware drivers for Windows Vista on it. We were able to use Windows Vista without any issues on both the white Macbook as well as MacBook Pro.

Bottom Line

Arguably, at Rs. 56,580, one can easily get a laptop with a better processor and internal hardware. But it won't be as cool as a MacBook, and won't compare it in terms of style and design. If price plays a greater role in a shopper’s buying decisions during tough economic times, Apple’s recent updates to its 13-inch white MacBook should help push some cost-conscious consumers over the laptop-buying fence.