It's official... MacBook Pros are noisy.

I've had my new MacBook Pro in the Apple store twice in the past few days complaining about the fans that run constantly.

The first time the Mac Genius said that she was not able to duplicate my concern. (Which I took to mean that I was just being overly sensitive.) I took it back home and messed around with it for another day and it was still irritating to me so I called the store directly and asked if I could exchange it for another one without having to pay the $199 restocking fee. I was told I could just to bring it in and they'd exchange it with no problem. When I got there said that whoever I talked to on the on the phone was wrong and that they had to have the Mac Genius look at it again. The second kid I got was extremely friendly and said that he could hear the fans but that my laptop wasn't any louder than his MacBook Pro and basically that they were somewhat loud laptops because of the amount of technology that they cram into the slim form factor requires the fans to run constantly. He said that he thought that it was going to irritate him at first, too... but that he got used to it. (NOTE: This is me paraphrasing his comments not EXACTLY what he said.)

So, again, I took it back home and messed around with it again this morning and in a quiet room it was irritating. So I called the Apple tech support phone number and waited on hold for less than 5 minutes. (Which was MUCH shorter than most of the other tech support lines I've called in the past.) I got a friendly guy who when I asked if MacBook Pros tend to be louder than many other laptops said. "Yes." He said pretty much what the kid from last night said that they cram a bunch of high end technology into a slim package and they tend to be noisier than other laptops since the fans have to run constantly to keep them cool. (NOTE: Paraphrasing again.)

Anyway, I guess it all comes down to the fact that MacBook Pros are noisier than other typical laptops. That combined with the fact that I might just be a bit more sensitive to noises than your average Joe makes me one frustrated guy when it comes to sitting in a quiet room with my laptop.

Aside from the fan noise I AM in love with this laptop. The display quality is great. It boots up and shuts down quickly. The battery seems to last for awhile. Plus I love OS X. I was VERY tempted to pay the $199 restocking fee to return it and get a $999 HP dv6780se from Best Buy. I don't want a computer with Vista, though, so I'd have to go through the trouble of installing XP, finding all the correct drivers, etc... and then I'd still like it less than OS X. On top of all of that, the Best Buy by me is sold out of the HP, anyway.

So... yeah. If you tend to be sensitive to noises and you like to use your laptop in very quiet places you might want to look to other computers... but if you're like most people you probably won't be annoyed with the noise as much as I am.