Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch

This review applies only to Macbook Pro 15 inch late 2011.

I was delighted with this Macbook Pro 15 inch late 2011 but since June 2014 it has had FIVE graphics cards failures (screen goes blank, or gets blue screen of death etc.), requiring a logic board replacement. The first time it cost me £410 to replace in a Apple Store, subsequently it was replaced free under the 3 month warranty period.

This has not happened just to me; there are over 577 posts in on the Apple Discussions site, over 15000 petitions on "change dot org" requesting Apple to do a general recall of this plagued product, a Facebook page packed with similar complaints and links to newspaper and magazine articles relating to this model. There are also two class action suites filed in Texas and California against Apple, charging them with knowingly selling this model with AMD graphics cards that were unreliable.

If anyone is considering buying THIS particular model second hand, DON'T - it's FAULTY by design.

This is my first mac laptop and it is definitely not my last! Mac and Apple have given me an overall better computing experience and I love the ease at which I am able to browser and do everything with just the shift of my hand. Gorgeous design and definitely value for money!

I've owned a Macbook for nearly 5 years now, and have been generally really pleased with the different ones I've had. The big think for me is their reliability - as I've found they've never let me down.

I find they rarely crash, and all the programmes run very quickly on it. I also find that because Macs don't get viruses I don't have to bother with virus software.

The main downside I'd say is their weight. I do have to say I find them really quite heavy - which is pretty annoying if you're carrying it around all the time. I've also had problems with the power-packs, which I've had to replace on a number of occassions - which is quite expensive!

Other than that I've generally been very pleased with my Macbook!

Prior to owning this I had a 20-inch iMac which I used for music and media at college, which itself is essentially a beefed up laptop with higher spec components and a detached keyboard and mouse.

I'm now a journalism student studying at university so something more portable is a bonus.

Put simply, the MacBook Pro such a joy to use. The 15-inch screen, despite being a tad smaller than that of my previous iMac, is tremendously bright and vibrant. The backlit keyboard makes the keys stand out much better in reduced lighting conditions too. It runs in almost complete silence and despite having no audible cooling fans, it barely heats up at all.

Battery life is very good and makes it very practical for someone like me who may need to have the laptop running for lengthy lectures multiple times throughout the day. Apple rate the battery life at 10 hours, but I've found running programs such as Firefox, Microsoft Word and MSN take the battery life down to around 5-6 hours. This is reduced further if you use a high brightness setting for the screen and if you watch videos on youtube, battery life drains away like water down a plughole. Having said that though, it is much, much better than my Dad's Windows-based laptop, which struggles to reach 2 hours whilst running comparable programs.

On to ease of use. This computer is discustingly fast! Booting up takes a maximum of around 20 seconds, from sleep it's practically instantaneous and it'll shut down in the blink of an eye. Load times for programs are fast and slick, even for big programs such as GarageBand or iMovie. Compared to just about every Windows laptop I have used, the MacBook is considerably faster.

As far as weight is concerned there are laptops that are lighter than this. At 2.5KG it's not a mammoth, but Apple's own MacBook Air is under half the weight, if you're prepared to sacrifice hardware and battery life of course. But it's certainly lots more portable than my iMac ever was, which tipped the scales at around 10KG.

The two speakers are quite sufficient as well. Of course you lose out on the lower frequencies with all laptop speakers, but I've heard much worse from competing laptops.

The built-in camera is good too despite it's diminuitive size, and is useful for video calls over skype without the need for using an external camera which would take up a USB port. Speaking of which, there are only two USB ports, which is irritating. A USB hub may be a worthwhile investment.

At £1499 though, it isn't cheap by any standards. As well designed as it is, a standard MacBook is almost half the price, which if you're willing to sacrifice the sleeker looks and higher spec hardware which the Pro features, is a better overall investment in my opinion, and certainly more friendly on your wallet! But as a complete and very functional package, the MacBook Pro is hard to beat.

Thank you to god, because i shopp these model of notebook, becaseu it very good.

I bought a 15.4 inch Macbook Pro with a 320GB HD, a 2.54GHz CPU, 4Gb RAM and two NVIDIA graphics cards built in. I already owned a 24 inch iMac which I bought to replace a troublesome PC which kept crashing. When buying an Apple laptop you are buying both a machine and dedicated software. The MAC operating system Mac OSX Leopard has proved fast and reliable; a recent upgrade to Snow Leopard introduced a few minor glitches but these have been largely ironed out. The laptop itself has superb build quality, being aluminium and not plastic. This makes it strong (if a little heavy) and the metal body conducts the heat away leaving the fan with little to do (I can never hear it). The screen is LED and not LCD backlit (placing it ahead of virtually all other laptops at the time) so it is incredibly bright yet uses little battery power. Apple's extraordinary claims about battery life do not stand up to scrutiny but, nonetheless, 3 to 4 hours running is good. I should add that my Macbook Pro was one of the last with a removable battery and the new ones run for even longer. However, turn on the 512Mb additional Nvidia card and battery life falls to just over an hour. With the graphics running like this it's not hard to find where the energy goes as the underside of the laptop gets rather warm! To be honest, I hardly use the second built in graphics card, as the standard on-board one is pretty good anyway. Finally a comment about price. Basically, you get what you pay for. I found that matching this machine's spec, at the time I bought it, with an equivalent PC laptop saved around 300-400 pounds but then I wouldn't have got the build quality and a reliable operating system but would have got the hassle of viruses, crashes etc. BTW you can run Windows and Linux on a MacBook Pro by installing them in virtual machines using Virtualbox freeware. This means they run full speed, inside windows, simultaneously with the MAC OS so can be used side by side seamlessly. Who needs a PC?

I currently write this review on said Mac book pro, and let me say that I am incredibly satisfied.

In all honesty. The main reason anyone would want to own a MBP is its aesthetics. The computer is incredibly sleek and lightweight (from its aluminum allow casing) and is very quick in Leopard OS. I dual boot my mac and most often run it in windows mode. I was very impressed by its adaptability. It runs almost all programs in Windows XP at native speed. The only drawback is that the MBP gets very hot when under heavy load in XP. So hot that you have to buy a separate USB fan to compensate for the heat.

My MBP has yet to fail me, and other than a very short battery life in XP mode, I have encountered little or no problem.

Now we just need some Linux support ^_^

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.

Absolute rubbish!!! Apple 15inch MacBook Pro costs a fortune but only works when it wants to, it's really bad!!! i would never recommend this to anyone, in fact I've bought another brand which works impressively better. i am appalled after looking at previous reviews, however Apple were very helpful dealing with my problems and finding solutions.