July 24th, 2007

Rating:

 

Price:

15-inch - $1999

17-inch - $3099

Sure, you could buy a faster Windows machine for the same price, but it won’t be as sexy as Apple’s Macbook Pro notebook.

Available with either a 15-inch or a 17-inch screen, the Apple MacBook Pro proves that a desktop replacement notebook doesn’t have to be gargantuan. The 15-inch weighs just 5.4 pounds, while the 17-inch comes in at 6.8 pounds and a sleek 1 inch thick.

The great looking, brushed-aluminum shell of the MacBook Pro offers a clean, crisp design, which continues inside, with the monochromatic brushed-silver keyboard and deck. The keyboard is  comfortable and quiet, and the oversized touchpad and single mouse button are a delight to use.

The 15-inch, 1440 x 900-pixel screen is sharp and clear, with great color rendition for any application. The Nvidia 8600M GT graphics engine comes standard with 128MB VRAM. The 17-inch, 1680 x 1050-pixel widescreen (available in either antiglare or glossy) is clear and very bright, with superb color  reproduction for image and video editing. It also has the best viewing-angle performance available, making the MacBook  Pro great for presentations. If you want an even larger screen, the ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 graphics engine drives an  external display up to 2560 x 1600 pixels.

Standard Apple hardware and software features are plentiful and you’ll love the backlit keyboard, which illuminates automatically, thanks to the machine’s  light sensor. The built-in iSight camera and software enable four-way videoconferencing, and the included remote launches and  controls Apple’s Front Row interface for playing movies, music, and photos from across the room. You’ll find FireWire 400 and  800 ports, and the ExpressCard slot accepts a Wireless EV-DO wireless broadband card. The MacBooks are also equipped with 802.11n Wi-Fi.

Then there are the extras of the Mac OS X 10.4 itself, including the Finder search utility and the Dashboard with dockable  Widget applets. The included iLife suite makes it easy to manage and edit photos with iPhoto, manage and expand your music  library with iTunes, make your own music with GarageBand, create movies and DVDs with iMovie and iDVD, create a Web site with  iWeb, and more. You can also load Apple’s Boot Camp utility and set up the MacBook Pro as a dual-boot machine running either  Mac OS X or Windows XP. In fact, the only software you’re likely to need to add is the Microsoft Office suite.

Performance from the 2.33-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo CPU and ATI graphics are very good and wireless throughput is excellent at 19.3 Mbps at 15 feet, and 14.6 Mbps at 50  feet. Battery life of 2 hours and 45 minutes is good for a 17-inch model.
 
For the price, you can definitely get a faster Windows notebook, but it won’t have all the Apple software and hardware extras, it’ll weigh at least two pounds more, and you know it won’t look nearly as great when you pull it out of your back pack or brief case!

Technical Specifications:

Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch

Screen: 15.4″ LED Backlit Screen @ 1440 x 900 Native Resolution
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo T7500 CPU at 2.2ghz (4MB Shared L2 Cache)
Memory: 2GB DDR2 PC2-5300 667mhz RAM
Hard Drive: 120GB HDD @ 5400RPM (Fujitsu)
Graphics: Nvidia 8600M GT with 128MB VRAM GPU
Optical Drive: Slot-loading 8x SuperDrive (DVD+R DL/DVDRW/CD-RW)
Wireless: Apple Airport Extreme Wireless B/G/N
Built-in Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR
Mac OS X 10.4.9 (Tiger)
Dimensions & Weight:
14.1″ x 9.6″ x 1.0″ (35.7cm x 24.3cm 2.59cm)
5.4lbs (2.45kg)
Cost: $1,999 USD ($1,799 with Education Discount)

Apple MacBook Pro 17-inch

Screen: 17-inch (diagonal) TFT display with support for millions of colors; optional glossy widescreen display
Processor: 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 4MB on-chip shared L2 cache running 1:1 with processor speed
Memory: 2GB DDR2 PC2-5300 667mhz RAM
Hard Drive: 120GB HDD @ 5400RPM (Fujitsu)
Graphics: ATI Radeon x1600 with 128MB VRAM GPU
Optical Drive: Slot-loading 8x SuperDrive (DVD+R DL/DVDRW/CD-RW)
Wireless: Apple Airport Extreme Wireless B/G/N
Built-in Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR
Mac OS X 10.4.9 (Tiger)
Dimensions & Weight:
15.4″ x 10.4″ x 1.0″ (39.2 cm 26.5 cm 2.59 cm)
6.8lbs (3.08kg)
Cost: $3,099 USD

Bottom Line
Apple’s new MacBook Pro is ideal for creative professionals looking for a feature-rich system with plenty of screen real estate.

Pros
Very good performance running Windows and Mac OS. Lightest 17-inch notebook available. Great features. Excellent software suite. Extra USB port. iSight camera.

Cons
Runs a bit hot. Expensive.