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- Apple MacBook Pro Top View
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- Apple MacBook Pro 3/4 View
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- Apple MacBook Pro Closed
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- Apple MacBook Pro Family
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- Apple MacBook Pro Front
There is a fantastic series on TV at the moment, called 90210. It’s basically a bunch of very attractive 27 year olds, pretending to be 16. It’s superficial, materialistic, immoral and reeking of spoilt rich kid. It’s awesome.
How does this relate to the recently updated MacBook Pro? Well, the day after we received the MacBook Pro, I took it to varsity and never have I had such an annoying day. The reason was the MacBook Pro, the thing is the MacBook Pro is beautiful, 90210 beautiful. So it garners 90210 attention. Every single human being in the whole world will ask you questions about it, complement it, state how Apple Mac rules/sucks and this makes doing any real work on it impossible.
Sitting at home or in the office where there are no other people around to waste your time asking questions, it is actually a pretty good notebook. Apple dropped off the 15” model but the range also includes a 13” and an all-powerful 17”
The MacBook Pro has an unmistakably Apple profile, it is very hard not to be impressed by the quality of Apples industrial engineering. It is a very slim notebook; in addition the edges are tapered making it feel thinner than it actually is. It feels as if it is forged from stone. Mostly because it is, the main body is machined from one solid piece of aluminum, we have yet to come across another notebook that can rival the MacBook Pro’s feel and build quality.
There are two downsides of the all aluminum construction; firstly it makes it a fair bit heavier than most other 15” notebooks and secondly, it has sharp edges, so while typing, the edge of the MacBook Pro puts an uncomfortably sharp pressure on your wrists, while it is not enough to hurt, it is fairly annoying.
The Screen:
Macs design heritage can be seen throughout the MacBook Pro. A specific area where it really shone through was the screen quality. The color accuracy and sharpness are second to none. This makes a serious difference when you are using a computer for really long periods of time. Having a good screen takes a ton of strain off your eyes. The screen does have one major issue, the resolution (How many pixels – little colorful dots – the screen can display). The current resolution is 1440 by 900, I recently used a Lenovo with the same resolution but on a 13” screen, and 1440 by 900 resolution is far better suited to a smaller screen, rather than the 15” screen used on the MacBook Pro. This results in objects looking a bit too big on the screen.
Touchpad:
Apple has a knack about how people use their products. The touchpad for instance is really big, I would say about twice the size of the average touch pad out there. It allows for really easy, accurate and fast control of the cursor. It also has some very cool multi-touch features. The ones, which we actually used, are:
Place four fingers on the touchpad and swipe up, this clears the screen of all open windows, swipe down and they are back again.
Place four fingers on the touchpad and swipe down; this displays all open windows in a grid like format.
Place two fingers on the touchpad and swipe down/up to scroll down/up.
Keyboard:
There is one area where we were a bit disappointed. The new black keyboard does not feel as quite good as the previous generation MacBook Pro’s silver keyboard. The keys are harder to press, and while the actual quality of the materials has improved, it actually feels cheaper. Don’t get us wrong it is still a good keyboard, leagues above most of the competition. But the enemy of good is great, and this is not a great keyboard.
Battery Life:
7 hours. That is a long time. Looking at the claimed battery life of most notebook manufacturers, is like believing the actors on 90210 haven’t had any “work” done. Unlike most notebook manufacturers claims of battery life, experience has taught us that when Apple says a notebook will give you seven hours of uptime, it really will. Turning on Bluetooth and WiFi, setting the screen brightness to its maximum and turning on the backlit keyboard will knock about 1,5 hours off. But still that really isn’t bad, and with normal usage – wifi, slightly dimmed screen and backlit keyboard off we managed to get around 6hours 30min. With the wifi off and the screen very dimmed, it went to 7hours 20min. This is enough time to unplug the MacBook Pro in the morning take it to varsity, do no work, because you have been answering peoples questions about it for the whole day, and then come home and plug it in.
Speed:
On the performance side of things we are not disappointed, but we were certainly not blown away. It is a very fast laptop, no doubt, but you are paying a lot of money for it, so we did expect it to be faster. Now we did only get the 2.53ghz model, which is the “slowest” of the MacBook Pro 15”s but it is still a very fast processor. So what is hampering the performance? Well after much debate, about 4 min or so, we came to a conclusion. The hard drive only spins at 5400rpm, while this is fast for say, a bicycle, but it is not very fast for a hard drive. Seriously if you buy the MacBook Pro, you should spec the 7200rpm hard drive. You will be sorely disappointed if you don’t. [Editors advice for the tech savvy: Don’t spec the 7200rpm hard drive from Apple as their prices are artificially inflated. Do some research and find a Mac compatible 7200rpm hard drive and install it yourself. Instructions are available on the web]
Value for Money:
The MacBook 15” which we are reviewing costs R20,999.00 ($1,699.00; £ ) Now this may seem like a rather large amount of money. Which in truth, it is. But the MacBook Pro really does offer great value for money. If you compare it to similar quality, similarly spec’d HPs and Dells, who nickel and dime you to death, the MacBook Pro offers significantly better value. For instance we spec’d the Dell Latitude E6500 to the match the specs of the MacBook Pro we reviewed. The total? Not what you’d expect. The Dell came to R22,773.00, nearly 10% more than the MacBook Pro!
Also, with a competing Dells or a HP you just look like just another corporate suit. While with the MacBook Pro, you get that Apple coolness that nobody can match.
The MacBook Pro makes sense even if you are a business user, or just cant stand Mac OSX Leopard (we know Mac OSX haters are out there, don’t be shy, its okay). Purchasing Windows 7 will only set you back a small amount, comparatively, and ironically running Windows 7 on your Mac will be the best part about using a MacBook Pro.
We installed Windows 7 with Bootcamp (Apple’s program which runs Windows on a Mac as if it is a PC) and we came to a very odd conclusion. There is no better computer to run Windows 7 on than the MacBook Pro! Surprising, we know, but Windows 7 runs smoother and faster on the MacBook Pro than any other notebook we have used to date. I’d go so far as to say – and I know I will get attacked by Mac fan boys for this – Windows 7 runs better on the MacBook Pro than Mac OSX Leopard.
On that bombshell I think it is time to wrap up this review.
Overall the MacBook Pro is a fantastic notebook, so long as you spec it with the 7200RPM hard drive. It does have some faults and there were some features we expected when the model was upgraded, that we never got (like 3G for instance) but on the whole this is a well-engineered, well spec’d, sexy and darn-right brilliant notebook. It’s like taking the sexy 90210 actors, giving them the acting skills of Will Smith and handing them a script written by Shakespeare. Style with substance.
Brendon Ambrose
Editor
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Well the new Apple MacBook Pro brings a lot of new features to the table from the previous generation. Users now get a large battery that gives pretty amazing life, a better display, faster processor, FireWire, SD-card slot, and best of all a lower starting price. Getting more for less seems to be the trend during this slow economy, so is there any reason not to buy the new MacBook Pro?I will keep looking around for more reviews.
Well the new Apple MacBook Pro brings a lot of new features to the table from the previous generation. Users now get a large battery that gives pretty amazing life, a better display, faster processor, FireWire, SD-card slot, and best of all a lower starting price. Getting more for less seems to be the trend during this slow economy, so is there any reason not to buy the new MacBook Pro?I will keep looking around for more reviews.
Well the new Apple MacBook Pro brings a lot of new features to the table from the previous generation. Users now get a large battery that gives pretty amazing life, a better display, faster processor, FireWire, SD-card slot, and best of all a lower starting price. Getting more for less seems to be the trend during this slow economy, so is there any reason not to buy the new MacBook Pro?I will keep looking around for more reviews.
Well the new Apple MacBook Pro brings a lot of new features to the table from the previous generation. Users now get a large battery that gives pretty amazing life, a better display, faster processor, FireWire, SD-card slot, and best of all a lower starting price. Getting more for less seems to be the trend during this slow economy, so is there any reason not to buy the new MacBook Pro?I will keep looking around for more reviews.
Well the new Apple MacBook Pro brings a lot of new features to the table from the previous generation. Users now get a large battery that gives pretty amazing life, a better display, faster processor, FireWire, SD-card slot, and best of all a lower starting price. Getting more for less seems to be the trend during this slow economy, so is there any reason not to buy the new MacBook Pro?I will keep looking around for more reviews.
Well the new Apple MacBook Pro brings a lot of new features to the table from the previous generation. Users now get a large battery that gives pretty amazing life, a better display, faster processor, FireWire, SD-card slot, and best of all a lower starting price. Getting more for less seems to be the trend during this slow economy, so is there any reason not to buy the new MacBook Pro?I will keep looking around for more reviews.
Well the new Apple MacBook Pro brings a lot of new features to the table from the previous generation. Users now get a large battery that gives pretty amazing life, a better display, faster processor, FireWire, SD-card slot, and best of all a lower starting price. Getting more for less seems to be the trend during this slow economy, so is there any reason not to buy the new MacBook Pro?I will keep looking around for more reviews.
Well the new Apple MacBook Pro brings a lot of new features to the table from the previous generation. Users now get a large battery that gives pretty amazing life, a better display, faster processor, FireWire, SD-card slot, and best of all a lower starting price. Getting more for less seems to be the trend during this slow economy, so is there any reason not to buy the new MacBook Pro?I will keep looking around for more reviews.
[...] not powerful enough, only has one USB port and the MacBook Pro has better battery life. – Full Review [...]
So true,
It is a good looking computer and it gets a lot of comments when people see it. Everything from how good it is to how Apple sucks and have overpriced products.
Well, I usually tell them they can believe what they want. I am still going to use my MacBook because I enojy using it. Mac OS X do what I want and I think it is worth it to pay a little more to use that operating system.
If someone disagree with me that is fine. It is not like we are buying our computers to impress other, are we?
[...] …Read More [...]