Apple Macbook Pro Intel Duo Review

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Apple Macbook Pro Intel Duo
3.1 stars
Average rating for this product is: 3.1 out of 5

From 3 ratings and 4 reviews

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ascolti's Review of Apple Macbook Pro Intel Duo Laptop

21st Jun 2006

Overall Rating

4 stars
  • Value for money
    4 stars
  • Screen Quality
    4.5 stars
  • Ease of Use
    5 stars
  • Time Laptop Owned
    Between 1 - 4 Weeks
  • Battery Life
    4 stars
Good Points

Performance
Design
Quality of construction


Bad Points

DVD-R Can be tempremental with some media


General Comments

The MacBook Pro is Apple's first professional grade laptop to sport latest Intel Core Duo processor. It replaces the old Powerbook G4 and outperforms it easily.

The all alluminium design is both easy on the eye and durable, not to mention extremely light and the display is top notch. Producing 1440x900 in just 15.4" is an excellent achievement and easily better my Toshiba P20's 17" screen.

Inside the hard drive is pure SATA running at around 5400rpm. Whilst this is no faster than IDE drives it should be noted that the transfer rate for these drives is much higher. So the difference is there to be felt.

OS X runs fantastically. I simply can't tell you what a joy it is to use. The 2.0 GHz Core Duo (essentially a dual processor and the single chip) it runs like a dream. But the Apple has another trick up its sleeve. Using a piece of software called Boot Camp, it is actually possible to install Windows (XP SP2) onto a created partition and run all your Windows apps on the same platform.

Furthermore, while in OS X a system called Rosetta allows you to run your old PowerPC on the new Intel hardware. Admittedly not at 100% of the performance you used to see, buy users or 1.0 GHz and lower G4 will actually see an INCREASE in performance using this system.

One area where Apple lagged behind the competition was in the performance of its core graphics processors. This laptop comes sporting an ATI X1600 with either 128mb or 256mb of dedicated RAM. It's no slouch anymore and most PC games run under Boot Camp. So far I've tested Medal of Honour, Battlefield 1942 and Battlefield 2. All work.

Finally, the software bundled with the hardware is the usual quality range of 'life' products you should come to expect from Apple. If you need an excuse to go Apple but need to make sure you can run some Windows apps . here is that excuse. Remember, this is quality hardware and somehow that £1399 starting price doesn't seem quite so bad.

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