Any other laptop = false economy (Apple MacBook Pro MA092B/A)

Name: boboshady

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Product:	Apple MacBook Pro MA092B/A
Date:	04.03.07 (157 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Multi-Platform OS capable and unrivalled quality

Disadvantages: expensive at first glance, gets hot when charging

Having used PowerPC based PowerBooks from Apple for many years, I recently decided to give myself a major productivity boost and upgrade to the latest version of their offering, an Intel Based MacBookPro.

I got everything charged up and plugged in, and proceeded (by firewire) to port my user account from my old powerbook. This is a very nice touch, as it brings over everything - programmes, files, even my desktop layout was the same, and it only took a couple of hours in total (my 10,000 image iphoto library came over too!).

Gripe time - At first, I really wish I'd not brought over the App's. Despite assurances that software will run on both Intel and PowerPC hardware, I noticed several problems with applications that made the system run very slow and ultimately drove me mad. Some of the more commercial programmes (Photoshop and BBEdit) worked fine, and it turned out to be the older versions of Apps like Firefox that were bringing the computer to it's knees.

However, after a couple of hours updating / replacing software I'd ported over, the laptop started to run a lot better. So good, in fact, that i decided to give it a test running Windows XP in Parallels.

All this did was highlight what I now suspect to be the biggest underlying problem with the default configuration of the earlier MacBookPro's - Lack of memory. Mine came with 512MB, and it really struggled with it.

I've upgraded to 2GB, and it runs just fine. XP runs at native speeds, and even plays some games, although there's a shortage of integrated graphics support because it is ultimately software emulation. However you can use it as a full on XP experience with BootCamp which will make XP use the full offering of the impressive hardware lineup in a MacBookPro.

On a pure hardware front, the MBP is of the same overall build quality that Apple are reknowned for. I've had lots of laptops, both Apple and other manufacturers, and nothing comes close to the reliability and quality feel of a MBP.

The only potential problem is that it does get very hot when on charge, so beware when you have it on your lap a lot.

Now Apple have ironed out the early bugs regarding software compatability, and that they're now shipping with a default 1GB of RAM, there's really no reason not to get one.

For your money, you'll get a beautiful, solid, reliable piece of hardware capable of running both OSX and, via Parallels, any other Operating System (including many Linux flavours and even Windows XP) at the same time. It'd be a false economy to think about getting anything else.

Summary: The Mac Book Pro makes full-on Desktop power quite literally fall into your lap.

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