Macbook Pro review

I have had a ton of computers. Literally probably a ton. I don’t even want to think about how many heavy metals are in those things. Everything from several Commodore 64’s up to my most recent; the Macbook Pro. This is my fourth Mac.

I got the 2.2ghz, 128mb video, 2gb ram model. It’s the Santa Rosa chipset.

This review won’t talk about benchmarks, or comparing it empirically against 10 other macs and pcs. Rather, it’s just about what the Macbook Pro does well, and does not do well.

Packaging: The Macbook Pro comes in a great slimline box which is only about 3 inches thick. Inside everything in Apple’s great box design style has it’s own place. Unlike many PC’s that I’ve owned it’s actually a useful box after you open it. You could repack everything in there easily.

Laptop exterior: The laptop’s exterior is metal. It’s very silky smooth and has just the right texture. It doesn’t show fingerprints too easily for the most part and is far easier to clean so far than the iBook G4 that I had.

One thing to note however, is that since the case is metal that the temperatures externally and internally are easily felt by your hands. The underside is almost always in excess of 100F, as is the area that you rest your wrists. If it’s been sitting turned off or sleeping for a while and the room is cold however the laptop feels like ice. Just a random thing, but I do believe that using this laptop on your lap could make it so that you could not reproduce later in life. It is the only laptop that I have understood the need for those laptop stands, or cooling pads. This is probably my… 7th or 8th laptop. Again, never felt anything this hot before at times.

The MagSafe laptop power cord is one of those things that I can’t figure out why they didn’t invent 20 years ago. There’s nothing too high tech about it. It’s just a magnet basically that is the power cord. Pull too hard, and it comes off.

I have always liked the little touches that Apple does, like making it so that you can see if the power cord is charging, or charged by the light at the end. Or the fact that you can check the battery power even if the battery isn’t in a laptop with a small button and indicators on the underside. Very clever. Very simple. Very Apple. I can’t see why other companies aren’t blatantly ripping off this more, as they all clone each other.

The laptop is pretty quiet for the most part. Not as quiet as my Mac Mini CD that I had, but much quieter than my aging iBook G4 that I got rid of, and it’s totally silent compared to any Mac PowerMac/Pro that I’ve touched.

Running software: This laptop screams. I have ran it through it’s paces and the only thing that I’ve had to wait on has been video related projects. Any computer would be slow when recompressing a 2gb DV file to H.264. It’s even worse when you have 60 of them lined up to go. Thank god for Compressor letting you render over multiple computers (installed the rendering node application on my friend Rich’s Macbook). It is obviously not as fast as some of Apple’s other offerings, but when you consider that it’s not even an inch thick, and weighs next to nothing that’s fine. It’s the fastest computer I have ever owned.

I also loaded Bootcamp with XP on it. I tried out Halflife 2, Oblivion and Bioshock. All ran great. It should be noted that I got the Matte screen on this as I also do photography work. The glossy would drive me up a wall. I wasn’t able to turn up EVERY option on Oblivion or Bioshock, but they were most of the way up. The video card supports DX10, but I’m not about to load Vista to try it out.

Logic, Aperture, Photoshop, Final Cut Pro, gaming, etc… this computer is amazing and does them all (often concurrently) without a hitch. I haven’t upgraded to the 4gb of ram yet, but I will soon enough and expect it to be even nicer.

I have four external hard drives attached to the system, and that works great. The internal storage isn’t enough for me except to store applications. I have thought of getting a 250gb internal drive to replace this one, but for now I’d rather just have more external LaCie D2 drives.

If you’re thinking of getting a laptop, this is the one to get. The 17″ one is nice too, and the HD screen offering is REALLY nice. However I often am on the subway, amtrak, bus, or on coach in an airplane. The 17″ is more of a portable desktop replacement IMHO. Too big for me. I kinda wish they still made the 12″ but that would have been too small actually since I sold all of my other computers in getting this.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 14th, 2007 at 2:34 pm and is filed under technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.