For several years I’ve gone by the theory that it’s best to invest as much money as you can into a powerful and reliable desktop machine, while spending any leftover money on a less expensive notebook. This mindset was reinforced by my decision to purchase a Mac Pro earlier this year.
Having my new Santa Rosa MacBook Pro in hand, I’ve officially unsubscribed from this theory. I don’t see myself going back to the desktop platform in a hurry, if at all. The advantages of having a laptop which can pull its weight far outweigh any advantages the desktop machine holds over it.
I’ve now got the ability to pick up one technological item weighing under 5 pounds, walk out the door, and have half of my life in my hands – literally. No moving data to external drives, no worries about keeping files synchronized – just pure bliss. Pure bliss of having everything ‘under the lid’ of a MacBook Pro.
Punchiness
The Santa Rosa MacBook Pro packs a punch in terms of performance. When you leave behind a 4 core desktop machine fitted out with 9GB of RAM, of course you’ll be taking a performance hit – I didn’t expect it to be so insignificant.
A clean transition moving to a portable platform has been reinforced by the way the MacBook Pro reacts to both day-to-day and processor intensive tasks.
I’ve currently got 2GB of RAM installed which will be bumped to 4GB later this week. Applications launch very quickly and the system feels very responsive when running a dozen applications simultaneously.
Editing in Aperture on 2GB is acceptable once closing all other open applications, I expect it to improve drastically with the extra 2GB. The image adjustment sliders are very responsive taking advantage of the NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics card, I can safely say that this card feels much quicker than the NVIDIA 7300 GT shipping with the base model Mac Pro (as of 12th November 07).
Light & Bright
Apple has done a great job on keeping its higher end customers happy with superb attention to fine details on their pro products. The MacBook Pro is no exception.
There are a few small things which are greatly emphasized on the exterior of the MacBook Pro. Although useless in some situations, the keyboard backlighting is a nice touch when using the notebook in dark situations. It eliminates typing errors previously caused by dim lighting.
The 15.4-inch LED display is bright. There’s no delay from the time of powering the machine on to the display hitting full brightness, it’s practically instantaneous. I’m a guy who likes to keep his displays at full brightness 100% of the time, the Santa Rosa MacBook Pro has pushed me away from this habit, I’ve found myself leaving the screen dimmed to around 50% of full brightness for general use.
Toning it down for a second on the topic of attention to detail, how could Apple have left out a magnetic lid latch? The MacBook has one, why not the MacBook Pro? This is a rather minuscule point to complain about, but I don’t see how Apple could have left it out when they’re so design conscious and have an eye for the small details.
Restrictions
One area I’ve felt somewhat restricted in is storage. 750GB of internal storage vs 160GB is quite a difference and takes some adapting to.
As of publishing this piece, Activity Monitor reports space utilized on the HDD as 131.08GB, with space remaining at 17.65GB. This however includes my 30GB iTunes library (music only), and 60GB Aperture library I refuse to go without when I’m commuting.
I sense a purchase of a 160GB FW400 portable hard-drive in the near future to house the Aperture library – it’s growing at a rapid pace and shows no sign of decreasing.
I’ve been blown away by the power and elegance of the new MacBook Pro. As stated above, I’ve officially unsubscribed from the theory of purchasing an expensive desktop and a cheap laptop – it’s all portable for me from here on in. I’m thoroughly looking forward to Quad Core Intel notebooks later next year.