I have a 15" MBP its pretty darn good. I use it for regular internettin', downloading and watching stuff, recording using garageband and some basic video editing. Oh and I play the occasional game on it (when if ever is modern warfare 2 coming out for mac??).
Its pretty much overkill for what I use it for, but it sure is purdy.
I would recommend to anyone, but there is a couple things to watch out for..
- Get a fast hdd. Get 7200 rpm or solid state if you can afford it. I couldnt justify SSD and I bought it in a shop rather than online so I got 5400rpm drive because thats what they had. Im considering replacing it as garageband will occasionally tell me it cant write fast enough when im recording. Thats really annoying.
- The UI is great, but it does have a few annoying features. For example, maximising a window doesnt really maximise it. You still need to drag it to fill the screen entirely.
- Backspace/delete annoys me.
- I get occasional pinwheels just using it for browsing or whatever. There was an update a while back some random freezing or something, and its gotten a lot better since I installed that (I dont remember the details of it though). This is pretty annoying but its never bad enough to make me want to do something about it.
The good things are really good tho..
- The touchpad is amazing. I bought a wireless mouse to play games with.. but otherwise I just use the touchpad.
- The screen is frikin awesome. Best screen ever.. but does get finger prints really easily..
- I checked my uptime the other day and it was at 50 something days. The only reason I restarted it is cause the automatic updates were starting to pile up and needed to restart to complete install. It was still pretty much rock solid.
- Battery life on the crappier video card (it has two! one for gaming one for good battery life) is about 5 hours. It predicts up to like 6 hours or something but I never really see that from it.
- Its got all these little things which make it awesome, like the charger for example.
- It takes the SD cards from my little video camera and reads them natively whereas my old windows xp machine needed the appropriate software installed (software sucked too).
- Being able to record my electric guitar out of the box just by plugging it is awesome.
In a year or two i'll chuck an SSD in this (really want the price to come down and the capacity to go up!!) and probably be happy for a while yet.
If I were going to buy it again though, I'd seriously consider getting a 24" iMac instead.. much cheaper, seems better suited to most of what I do. Most of the time it spends at home on the couch or my dinner table so I dont really really need a laptop. But its sure nice to have.
Its pretty much overkill for what I use it for, but it sure is purdy.
I would recommend to anyone, but there is a couple things to watch out for..
- Get a fast hdd. Get 7200 rpm or solid state if you can afford it. I couldnt justify SSD and I bought it in a shop rather than online so I got 5400rpm drive because thats what they had. Im considering replacing it as garageband will occasionally tell me it cant write fast enough when im recording. Thats really annoying.
- The UI is great, but it does have a few annoying features. For example, maximising a window doesnt really maximise it. You still need to drag it to fill the screen entirely.
- Backspace/delete annoys me.
- I get occasional pinwheels just using it for browsing or whatever. There was an update a while back some random freezing or something, and its gotten a lot better since I installed that (I dont remember the details of it though). This is pretty annoying but its never bad enough to make me want to do something about it.
The good things are really good tho..
- The touchpad is amazing. I bought a wireless mouse to play games with.. but otherwise I just use the touchpad.
- The screen is frikin awesome. Best screen ever.. but does get finger prints really easily..
- I checked my uptime the other day and it was at 50 something days. The only reason I restarted it is cause the automatic updates were starting to pile up and needed to restart to complete install. It was still pretty much rock solid.
- Battery life on the crappier video card (it has two! one for gaming one for good battery life) is about 5 hours. It predicts up to like 6 hours or something but I never really see that from it.
- Its got all these little things which make it awesome, like the charger for example.
- It takes the SD cards from my little video camera and reads them natively whereas my old windows xp machine needed the appropriate software installed (software sucked too).
- Being able to record my electric guitar out of the box just by plugging it is awesome.
In a year or two i'll chuck an SSD in this (really want the price to come down and the capacity to go up!!) and probably be happy for a while yet.
If I were going to buy it again though, I'd seriously consider getting a 24" iMac instead.. much cheaper, seems better suited to most of what I do. Most of the time it spends at home on the couch or my dinner table so I dont really really need a laptop. But its sure nice to have.