??? about optical drive, installation discs and display in "new" refurb MB

Question

Yesterday I received the "new" refurbished MB 2.0 1GB RAM 120GB HD (black) bought for my wife a week ago through the Apple website.
(I have a new MBP with a glossy display since January and it has so far been w/o problems.)
As soon as I set up the MB, I noticed the following three issues. Perhaps someone can comment and propose solutions where appropriate.
I did set myself up as the Administrator on the MB and arranged for fast user switching (I am the only user on my MBP). I downloaded all the updates onto the new MB (it came with 10.4.8 preloaded).
Here are the issues/questions (going from minor to major):
1. the optical drive slot of the MB shows a lot more resistance than the one on the MBP. When I pushed in the first DVD I was actually afraid of breaking something. The first time I tried to eject it it would not come out, instead it reloaded again after the initial attempt to eject the DVD. Subsequent attempts to insert a DVD were met with equal resistance, but the ejection was smoother. Should I be worried about this apparent higher resistance to disc insertion than in the MBP or is this expected?
2. my MBP came with two installation DVDs, one labeled "MBP installation disc 1" and the other "installation disc 2". The MB came with two DVDs, one labeled "MB installation disc 1" and the other as "Mac installation disc 1" (yes, both are "disc 1"). Shouldn't there be a "MB installation disc 2" instead of the latter one?
3. this is bothering me the most: the display of the MB is horrible, the colors are faded and the whole screen is bluish. The best and closest (but still not normal) appearance the display has when the MB lid is open as wide as possible and I look at it almost from below (a view 45 degrees from below makes the text of web pages legible, though the gray brushed metal-appearance of Safari, for example, still looks light blue rather than gray). I did check postings on this forum and found that the color settings can be changed in display preferences, and that something called "color LCD" is probably the preferred setting for a MB. Interestingly, my MBP is set to this setting and has a total of 6-7 different settings to choose from. However, the MB does not have this setting ("color LCD") and has only 3 different settings, though both MBP and MB are now 10.4.10. Needless to say, my glossy MBP display looks fantastic. How do I get the MB to look that way too? Can I download this "color LCD" setting from somewhere? (BTW, I did notice on in-store MBs, particularly in non-Apple stores such as CompUSA, in the past this issue with faded colors and a bluish discoloration, some of them even worse then this "new" refurbished MB. I was in the local Apple store yesterday evening for an unrelated issue and looked briefly at the newest black MBs, their colors are somewhat more faded and bluish than my MBP, but not like our new MB).
I'm at work now, so if anyone has ideas or specific additional questions, I'll be able to address them tomorrow.
Please keep in mind, I'm no computer wiz and have some experience with a Mac only since January.
Thanks for any suggestions you might have.
Message was edited by: tutlek

Answer 1

tutlek wrote:
3. this is bothering me the most: the display of the MB is horrible, the colors are faded and the whole screen is bluish. The best and closest (but still not normal) appearance the display has when the MB lid is open as wide as possible and I look at it almost from below (a view 45 degrees from below makes the text of web pages legible, though the gray brushed metal-appearance of Safari, for example, still looks light blue rather than gray). I did check postings on this forum and found that the color settings can be changed in display preferences, and that something called "color LCD" is probably the preferred setting for a MB. Interestingly, my MBP is set to this setting and has a total of 6-7 different settings to choose from. However, the MB does not have this setting ("color LCD") and has only 3 different settings, though both MBP and MB are now 10.4.10. Needless to say, my glossy MBP display looks fantastic. How do I get the MB to look that way too? Can I download this "color LCD" setting from somewhere? (BTW, I did notice on in-store MBs, particularly in non-Apple stores such as CompUSA, in the past this issue with faded colors and a bluish discoloration, some of them even worse then this "new" refurbished MB. I was in the local Apple store yesterday evening for an unrelated issue and looked briefly at the newest black MBs, their colors are somewhat more faded and bluish than my MBP, but not like our new MB).
Have you tried calibrating the monitor in System Preferences>Display>Color?
I had a similar problem to this when I bought my MacBook (too blue) and I calibrated it (using the "Expert Mode").
After that, it was fine.