I have now had my 15" MBP 2.8 GHz for ten days and absolutely love it. I upgraded from a mid 2005 iBook G4 1.42 Ghz and the difference in performance is amazing. I generally think that the slickness of OS X means that even old hardware works well, but as I wanted to start editing video (incl. HD) and do more advanced photoshop work, the old G4 just was too slow.
I'm now preparing the G4 to sell on to hopefully a Mac newbie.
The things I love are;
- The battery!!
- The display - I'm sitting on the fence as far as anti-glare goes. The iBook as anti-glare and I found it had a softening effect on the display. From what I have seen on a 17" MBP with anti-glare, the higher resolution of display is harder hit. I also generally use the MBP in areas where glare isn't really a problem.
- The SD slot. Great for uploading pictures at lightning speed. Although I suspect an express card slot SD reader would be just as quick. Would have preferred Apple to have kept the expresscard slot, but bundled a SD reader.
- The slick design. It's pure eye-candy.
- The speed of the machine.
- The dual graphics cards. I only use the 9600 occasionally, but do intend to play more games on this, as my old PC gaming machine has died and I have no intention of buying another windows machine.
- It's all so quiet!! Even when the fans need to kick in, it is very quiet and hardly noticable.
- Backlit keyboard and auto-dim function that dims the keyboard and display. (although I think it can be over-sensitive and adjust a little too much!!).
- The trackpad. I did start out by using it more or less the same as the old trackpad and button, but then got used to using the whole pad for scrolling and pressing (incl. two fingers for alt).
What I don't like;
- It's so nice that my girlfriend always wants to be using it!!
- Dirt - For some reason, I am finding that the alluminium case attracts a lot of dirt. I'm currently giving it a good wipedown once a week.
- For some reason, my MBP goes into hiberation mode (not sleep) once the battery is drained. If I'm using the 9600 when this happens, coming out of hiberation sometimes brings the screen back with corrupt graphics for about 2 mins.
- In the UK, pricing of MBP is still high compared to US pricing at current exchange rates. I effectively got a £1:$1.35 exchange rate at the time when the actual rate was £1:$1.56. Luckily I get 8% discount on Apple products through my employer, so it wasn't as painful!
I am very much looking forward to Snow Leopard and OpenCL and GCD. Does anyone yet know for sure whether the GPU not currently being used, can be addressed by OpenCL? If so, I can imagine this becoming a dream games machine as you could be using the 9600 for game graphics and the dual core CPU and 9400 for all other processing. The only downside to this is that it would consume a large amount of power, leading to very short battery times!!
Phil
I'm now preparing the G4 to sell on to hopefully a Mac newbie.
The things I love are;
- The battery!!
- The display - I'm sitting on the fence as far as anti-glare goes. The iBook as anti-glare and I found it had a softening effect on the display. From what I have seen on a 17" MBP with anti-glare, the higher resolution of display is harder hit. I also generally use the MBP in areas where glare isn't really a problem.
- The SD slot. Great for uploading pictures at lightning speed. Although I suspect an express card slot SD reader would be just as quick. Would have preferred Apple to have kept the expresscard slot, but bundled a SD reader.
- The slick design. It's pure eye-candy.
- The speed of the machine.
- The dual graphics cards. I only use the 9600 occasionally, but do intend to play more games on this, as my old PC gaming machine has died and I have no intention of buying another windows machine.
- It's all so quiet!! Even when the fans need to kick in, it is very quiet and hardly noticable.
- Backlit keyboard and auto-dim function that dims the keyboard and display. (although I think it can be over-sensitive and adjust a little too much!!).
- The trackpad. I did start out by using it more or less the same as the old trackpad and button, but then got used to using the whole pad for scrolling and pressing (incl. two fingers for alt).
What I don't like;
- It's so nice that my girlfriend always wants to be using it!!
- Dirt - For some reason, I am finding that the alluminium case attracts a lot of dirt. I'm currently giving it a good wipedown once a week.
- For some reason, my MBP goes into hiberation mode (not sleep) once the battery is drained. If I'm using the 9600 when this happens, coming out of hiberation sometimes brings the screen back with corrupt graphics for about 2 mins.
- In the UK, pricing of MBP is still high compared to US pricing at current exchange rates. I effectively got a £1:$1.35 exchange rate at the time when the actual rate was £1:$1.56. Luckily I get 8% discount on Apple products through my employer, so it wasn't as painful!
I am very much looking forward to Snow Leopard and OpenCL and GCD. Does anyone yet know for sure whether the GPU not currently being used, can be addressed by OpenCL? If so, I can imagine this becoming a dream games machine as you could be using the 9600 for game graphics and the dual core CPU and 9400 for all other processing. The only downside to this is that it would consume a large amount of power, leading to very short battery times!!
Phil
