Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch Review

Overall Rating

I bought the MacBook pro for use at university, after a long search for looking for a laptop. I read magazines, browsed internet reviews and asked for genuine opinions. I shortlisted a Dell XPS, but a student offer on Apple products tempted me.

I never have been a Mac fan, always preferring windows. After some trouble with vista and xp, i thought back to those college days I had been using a mac, where I never had any trouble with the OS crashing or any of the usual windows lagging.

I bought the MacBook pro from the Apple store in sheffield that had a great atmosphere and the staff were very helpful and welcoming. The model i bought was the middle model of the 15 inch range, the 2.6ghz model.
The specs of the machine are:
2.66ghz intel core2duo P8800 processor
4GB RAM DDR3
320GB hard drive
SuperDrive
Bluetooth with edr
Airport with wireless N capability
LED backlit screen
Nvidia 9400m and nvidia 9600gt 256mb graphics chips
sd card reader

These are very impressive specifications, especially for more power hungry applications. I am studying product design, so I need a laptop that will cope with 3D rendering and photoshop, which this will cope with very well. The model costs £1499, but I got 15% student discount and they also included the 3 years apple-care for £58 which covers against breakdown. And between june and december, you qualify for the Snow Leopard upgrade for only £7.95.

This is the best laptop I have ever had, and even the small features make it enjoyable. The multi-touch touchpad is similar to the touch-screen on the iphone, which allows multi-finger gestures such as pinching to zoom in an out, rotating your fingers to rotate and to swipe to switch applications, as I said, its only a small feature, but something you quickly get used to. The screen quality is amazing and is the staple piece of the macbook. Because its LED backlit, colours are rich and vivid, whites are bright and blacks are deep. The brightness is good, and for most normal tasks, you may want to turn it down. The screen also changes brightness automatically depending on ambient light, but can be deactivated. The keyboard illuminates, so you know exactly where your fingers are typing. The keyboard is rather impressive. Because the keys are spread out, there's a limited chance of chubby fingers pressing letters they shouldn't be, and for the touch typists the keys have a good sense of feedback and are very responsive.

In terms of style alone, the Macbook pro along with all other apple products is simply stunning and beautiful to look at. The aluminum is stylish, but also allows heat dissipation and durability, but it also makes it comfortable in the hands, especially if you are holding it.

The OS on here is Leopard, apple's best OS. Its quick, responsive and unlike windows it doesn't lag, freeze or crash. Its much easier to use and there are many cool features such as the Stacks and Quick look etc. Even the software you get already is good, with the garageband, iphoto and imovie which are professional standard. Even basic things like Stickies and dictionary are things you don't find on windows, which just goes to show that mac is truly a OS that works with you not against.

If you really need to use windows, you can install it on the bootcamp utility, which makes a partition of the hard drive. Its easy to do, but as you can expect, Mac guides you through every stage. Even windows works better on a mac! Swapping from one os to the other is as easy and right-clicking and restarting, there's nothing to it at all.

Performance is excellent, the processor is one of intel's best core 2 duo processors. Two cores running at 2.6ghz is as you could imagine, a powerhouse capable of some serious number-crunching. Memory is 4GB of the new DDR3 standard, which is quicker than DDR2. This feature is not commonly found at the moment and is still relatively new, and only Apple and Dell are the two manufacturers that currently use it. Combine 4GB and DDR3 and you can run a large amount of programs with speed with no lag or freezing. The Macbook has 2 graphics cards, a 9400 and a 9600. The 9400 is a battery light chip which is designed to be used for low intense applications, such as internet and word processing. Restart into high-performance, and the dedicated 9600 with 256mb chip comes into effect, capable of running the most demanding games, video & movie editing and cad rendering, but just a warning, any demanding programs will heat up the laptop to very warm, so you would have to sit at a table as it would be uncomfortable to sit with it on your lap for a extended period of time.

If you need to use the laptop on the move, the battery will last you almost 7 hours on battery saver, which is very good for a laptop. This is because the battery is built in, and is larger because it doesn't require all the hatches and catches normal batteries do, and also because of the clever power management within leopard. Turn to windows however, and the battery will last just over 2 hours, which is around the normal amount.

Overall the macbook pro is a very good laptop, expensive but is worth every penny. Once you have used mac, you will not want to go back to windows at all. I would recommend it to anybody.