My MacBook Pro SAD experience: MUST READ if you are about to get 1.

Question

Things to clarify at the beginning:
1. im not an english native speaker so try not be too picky for my language.
2. im not a mac hater and i've own a powerbook 17 1.5g as well as a iMac G5
Here we go:
1. I've spent £2000+ to get my top spec MacBook Pro (2.16/2G/7200rpm) so i'm kinda expecting for a super computer, am i wrong?
2. My first unit failed me on the 4th day of purchase, after I spend 2 entire days to load all the software up, immigrate all my emails and academic papers from my SONY FE11s, it failed. The system won't start up and i can't even see the Apple logo after press the power button. I bring it to Regent Street Apple Store, and the genius told me that it is because my DVD is stucked inside and the MacBook pro iS KEEP READING it instead of the Hard drive.
Then we tried holding C, Mouse Button, F12, Eject, reset PRAM, PMU and the disc just woudn't came out (a standard dvd). Then they said they'll crack the machine open to get the disc out and they'll give me a brand new replacement right away. ( You can see how stupid is MacBook Pro's firmware designed, even it IS the disc's faul, it should be able to skip reading it after say 30 seconds or so and go straight on to the harddisc right? )
The genius said that they will give me a call once they managed to get the thing booted and transfer the original data to my new MBP. The next day i get a call, saying that all the HARDDISC DATA was "destoried" and "Unrecoverable"... and I've default my FE11S sony and put it on eBay. so i don't manage to keep a copy of my files.
3. Heat issue.
No matter what people tell you, don't believe it. go to any apple store in the afternoon or evening while their display machines have been running for several hours. touch the bottom of the screen and the body. It burns your finger. Now i'm using my macbook pro on iCurve (which hangs the mbp in the middle of the air and make a perfect cooling condition) and the room temp is around 15c. The machine is still EXTERMELY HOT even i just use it to browse web for 30 minutes. I did not dare to touch the bottom of the screen (where the MacBook Pro words are displayed), and it will be a GREAT PAIN if you insist to touch that thing for over 2 seconds and want to DEMONOSTRATE it is safe.
4. Stability
Yes i know we Mac users always teasing around with Windows Bluescreens, but the macbook pro i've got in hand hangs every one or two days AND without famous "four langauge error message". It just hangs there like a overclocked PC! i'll have to hold the powerbutton and get it shut.
5. Memory consumption
Rosetta is one of the biggest fat lie that apple have made. without 2 gig ram don't dream to use over 2 ppc programmes at the same time.. just let me show you something ( yes i was watching a live tv show in safari hence the cpu and memory consumption, but that is still far more than i will expect ) 22mb LEFT with ONE PPC programme on ... I only notice this because i was trying to mount a disc image and failed with error msg "too many applications running"? is it too many for a £2000+ coreduo and 2g ram laptop? take a look at the screen shot and judge it yourself.
With the great pile of "INACTIVE MEMORY", i really start to doubt the ability that mac os x tiger handels the memories. After the screen shot i've shut down all the running applications, then i switched the activity monitor back on, guess what, i only get less than 200 mb free memory, the rest are still inactive or locked up....
CONCLUSION:
Yes the macbook pro is superbly fast, espcially after i got my aperture 1.1 upgrade on it and compare with my powerbook running version 1.0. yes it opens itunes in 2 seconds and make me feel like i was merely maximize the window from hiding. BUT HEY... this computer cost me over £2000 (that's about $30000?) and it's a laptop that you can't leave it on your lap, a macintosh that is not as stable as a windows server 2003 (that's wat i got on my only pc , im a geek and i own a pile of different computers). i didn't want to mention the whine and other famous bugs because that's not an issue to a geek whos room is filled with eletronic noises and i use wired connection for maximum speed so my airport wont drop.
but i'd rather send my powerbook 17 to daystar and get a 2.0 G powerg4 upgrade if i have a second chance.
over.

Answer 1

You misunderstand the memory management scheme and misinterpret the display you're seeing.
To start with, free memory is wasted memory. Once some disk contents have been brought in, it is wasteful to discard that data just to make the RAM that it occupied "free." Inactive memory is memory that is not currently used, can be given to an application that needs it without doing any disk I/O (or used as a destination for reading disk content) but which currently holds disk data that might be useful in the future. I.e., it's file content of some sort.
To get a better idea of how Mac OS X manages RAM and how to interpret the Activity Monitory dispaly, see this tech note: Mac OS X: Reading system memory usage in Activity Monitor.
Rosetta is indeed memory hungry, but it's an interim solution. With 2 GB of RAM installed, you can run a lot of applications with alacrity.
Lastly, your Safari, an Intel-native application, is currently using 2 GB. This is a known issue with Safari, though it seems to me that it has gotten better since 2.0.3 was released in 10.4.6. Still, it's a bit of a memory hog, to be sure. Now that Firefox, Camino and Seamonkey are all available in Universal (Intel native) forms, you have alternatives. Firefox seems a lot more parsimonious when it comes to RAM.
Randall Schulz