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It’s now been about six weeks since the receipt of the new MacBook Pro core i7 machine. As I usually do, I went with a 17″ model again, and again chose the non glare screen option. While this means no glossy black bezel, it also means no annoying reflections off the super bright screen. I chose the 500gb drive and upgraded the RAM to 8gb. In selecting the Core i7 version I got the faster CPU and top end graphics capability.

First Impressions

This is my first unibody machine although I had bought a 13″ MBP for my wife. It feels lighter and more compact than the old MBP although technically they are about the same. The new screen graphics are really fast and the colours are amazing. I notice it most when working on HDR photos. I’m not a gamer but I do some video work and find that the machine is definitely faster rendering and even the redraws seem faster. This week I will be stress testing the machine building some content with the latest Camtasia:Mac that will include some HD video. The drive is quick enough and while the SSDs are faster the price differential is not justifiable to me.

Ongoing Use

Like the old unit I still have kernel panic issues with the eSata card that uses the Siig chipset sometimes on insertion and sometimes on removal. I am using their new drivers with my card that came from Griffin. Annoying but not a show stopper. eSata is so much faster for backups and Time Machine.

I use the machine for presentations several times a week and the mini display port adapter works great and is easier to connect than the old DVI adapter but I have more issues where it wants to mirror the screen even though I always select dual screen mode when connected. I just ran the 10.6.4 update so maybe this will improve. I also have a Targus bluetooth remote but it has become very unreliable for use with the new machine. I’ll need to see if others are experiencing this issue.

When traveling I use the machine to extend the hotel room internet connection to my iPad and iPhone and although the procedure seems to have changed since I last tried this, it works wonderfully. The new black keyboard is much easier to see in low light than the old aluminum topped one and I think I may type marginally faster on it. It’s the same keyboard as on my first gen MacBook Air and has a good feel, with decent resistance and return.

I kept the predecessor in production for just over two years and while there were few things wrong with it, other than the case starting to separate at the seams, I’m very happy to have upgraded and believe that the expense was worthwhile.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010 at 9:51 am and is filed under Apple, MacBook Pro, Macintosh. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.