Chris's Tech Reviews for the Home

Today we have the Apple Macbook Pro 15. We purchased this laptop a few months ago, so I will post a short review of why we purchased it and what it may provide the potential buyer. We were looking to purchase another notebook, and had previously only owned PC's. This is our first Mac.

Even though we were worried whether we would be able to cope with the challenges of OS X, there was always the comforting thought that we could install windows as required. With that aside we took a plunge.

Why 15 not 13? or 17? Well this was the best compromise. Already having a 13" laptop, there was no need for us to get another, and the bigger screen real estate on the 15" made it a better viewing/browsing experience.

The highlights of this unit are that is excellently streamline. We had looked at a few other competing hardware from Asus, HP, dell, but the hardware on the apple seemed solid. I suspect that was the contribution of the unibody aluminium design. It feels like a thin and light, however it is heavier than one might expect. Although still being lighter than other 15" laptops I suspect.

The other things that stand out are the lovely screen, providing nice vivid colours and I for one do not mind the gloss screen. I think its easier to keep clean? The trackpad is excellent and the most sensitive that I have used to date. Especially compared to other notebooks I have had in the past. On a scale of 1-10, the sony vaio would score a 5-6 out of 10. It is functional, and has a few tricks, however the macbook pro would get a 9/10 with its wonderfully sensitive keyboard, and multitouch gestures.

Finally battery life and the mag safe charger are nice features. The battery life is around 7-8 hrs and feels long enough that you dont feel like you are constantly looking for your charger. The magsafe is nice in that it feels like it grips solid, however should you trip over the wire, you dont have that fear that you will break the charging mechanism.

Finally a few words about my first time experience with Mac OS X.

1. The boot time is excellent. Probs takes about 10 seconds to get to a usable state.
2. The software update mechanism seems decent.
3. Installing programs is quite strange and the file structure is not what you expect coming from PC.
4. The settings do not seem as in depth as on windows.

The main bonus is the fast startup and shutdown time. I have not felt the need to install windows on this machine. Although if I didnt have a windows desktop machine, I may feel the need to do so.


Would I recommend this to you?

Yes. If you are looking for a notebook, that will do what you want it to do, with very little configuring required, then yes. If you want a notebook to casually browse casually and fast, and consume multimedia, watch videos, organise photos and webcam, then it is excellent. If you are a gamer and want to play games, and adjust heaps of different settings, then maybe a windows pc may be better for that, as more games support pc rather than mac. And I also havent tried finding many games for mac. I do know that my private online server does NOT support macs.

Overall a well built machine, that is more than enough for the casual user, with solid apple quality and design.