I am sure that most of you know that Apple refreshed their MacBook lineup. However the MacBook Pro 17″ didn’t get much love. As Pooh Bear would say, “Bother!”.

Current Status

As you know I use a Mac for almost all of my computing and have been very happy. I bought my current MacBook Pro in October 2006 and it is still running very well indeed. I have not needed to wipe and reinstall at any time which I would have done with Windows. I have had one hard disk corruption where my machine would not boot, and it took less than two hours to restore from Time Machine, and lost only a half a day of data. I have upgraded it with 4GB of memory and recently added a 320GB drive. I am already planning on buying a 500GB 7200 RPM drive to get more speed.

Overall it is difficult to tell you how impressive the Apple MacBook has been, because it just works the way you want. Its reliable, doesn’t seem to get scratches or look worn out, the OS is easy to update and upgrade. And the applications are really impressive.

In my current workplace, four other network engineers have MacBooks and every one is very happy with system. So it is not just me.

My Requirements

Since I am fully mobile, and running dynamips, the MacBook Pro 17″ is the only laptop for me. I want a lot of screen real estate, and do a lot of heavy working on my machine. The OS X apps are fine, it is the VMWare / Parallels virtual machines for Windows and Linux that are slowing it down. I want more memory than 4GB in my laptop. I didn’t get that.

Its heavy….

And sure, the MBP 17″ is heavy. Really heavy. By the time I put the minimum load into my computer backpack, including power brick, cables, and a small pouch of pens and other “stuff”, I am straining to lift it and need to brace my self and often make stupid grunting noises.¹

So a quick check of the specs:((Taken from MacWorld UK))

The 2.5GHz 17-inch MacBook Pro, for a suggested retail price of £1,949, includes:
– 17-inch widescreen LED-backlit 1920 x 1200 glossy display
– 2.5 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 6MB shared L2 cache;
– 800 MHz front-side bus;
– 4GB 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM;
– NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics with 512MB with GDDR3 video memory;
– 320GB Serial ATA hard drive running at 5400 rpm, with Sudden Motion Sensor;
– a slot-load 8X SuperDrive with double-layer support (DVD+/-R DL/DVD+/-RW/CD-RW) optical drive;
– DVI output port for video output (VGA adapter included);
– built-in AirPort Extreme 802.11n wireless networking and Bluetooth 2.1+EDR;
– Gigabit Ethernet port;
– built-in iSight video camera;
– three USB 2.0 ports;
– one FireWire 800 port and one FireWire 400 port;
– ExpressCard/34 expansion card slot;
– one audio line in and one audio line out port, each supporting both optical digital and analog;
– Multi-Touch trackpad and illuminated keyboard;
– 85 Watt MagSafe Power Adapter.

So my two year old MacBook has the following:

–2.33GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 4MB L2 cache
– 17-inch widescreen LED-backlit 1680 x 1050 glossy display
–320GB SATA at 5400 rpm (installed my own HDD)
– 4GB RAM (upgraded a year ago).

So there isn’t much here that I haven’t already got. It would be nice to have the 802.11n, or the new trackpad, ad the screen resolution is a bit higher but not enough to spend a couple of thousand pounds.

Still performing well

My current MacBook Pro is under warranty for another year, so no great rush. I am very pleased that this machine is still performing well after two years. It cost a lot when I bought it, but two years later I am still using it, and it still performs well²

So I will keep that money in the bank, run Onyx one more time to tidy up and accelerate my machine and wait for the next refresh. Insert image of me stroking my laptop.

Footnotes

1. No need to point out that I am not very fit…thanks [back]
2. so I want more, but, really, it’s OK [back]