Today I had the bad luck to have to deal with a damn Macbook Pro on which I need to install a retarded software (IBM Rational Software Architect).
Despite RSA becoming one of the worst piece of crapware I’ve ever seen this time it wasn’t the problem.
The Macbook was one of the latest model, a 13″ one equipped with a Core i5 Sandy Bridge CPU and an awesome a certain amount of GB 5400 RPM hard disk drive…everything sold at the fair price of 1200 or so €.
As long as you use it just for what close to every Apple user use it – going on Facebook, synchronizing music tracks on an IPod and iCloud – everything is fine (tho, you can do these things with every PC/MAC/whatever-you-want not older than 6 or 7 years).
Anyway, if you happen to be one of those bunch of unlucky people on earth who pretend to use it for something different you will quickly face with the complete inability of this, I repeat, 1200 € worth machine, to provide, at least decent performances.
Starting from the point that many programs (like RSA) don’t exist for OSX you have to virtualize a Windows or Linux OS, and here comes the problem.
The 5400 RPM HDD is so crappy that when you fire up the virtual machine everything slow down to a level similar to a 10 years old PC with a P4 Willamette and a 20 GB PATA HDD.
I really don’t get why people keep buying those completely overpriced piece of garbage apple is selling; this Macbook Pro hardware wise is very similar to my Thinkpad but it costs much more (something like +80/90% over the price of the Thinkpad), is way slower, have an higher weight and miss some important features (like external battery, UMTS module, matte display, trackpad, etc etc).
Keep up the good work apple…