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Comment by jboydyhacker | Hacker News Reader

Nice to have i5/i7 but the NVidia GPU is somewhat terrible. An ATI 5xxx series is not only more power efficient which Apple cares about, but much more powerful. No IPS screen or USB 3.0 which you sorta want given the premium status of mbps. Jobs commented that MBP would go to a "new level" this year-- this isn't quite new level so I would guess another update in the fall. SSD upgrades also not as useful since no TRIM support. Still the sexiest laptop out there tho so what can ya do but give Steve your money?

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One reason I like my nVidia chip is that the Adobe creative suite (Photoshop CS4, and I'd assume CS5) takes advantage of the GPU to take load off the CPU. I'm not a gamer though, so I don't have anything to share in that department.

Link: http://techreport.com/discussions.x/15571

Yeah but they could have at least done more memory on the GPU if they were gonna do a 330m. And if you are gonna stick with Nvidia why not do a NVidia 335 which has been out a while now.

I agree. Personally the major issue I have with my current MacBook is the lousy screen, and it doesn't look like it has improved much with these new MacBook Pros. So sad.

ditto on the USB3 - I think 2011 will have a whole slew of products (most importantly, displays) based on USB 3.

I think the best powerhouse laptop is the Dell M6500 with 1GB ATI m7740 or 1GB nvidia FX3800M + USB3.0 options.

The worst part is that the macbook pro has a max memory capacity of 8GB, while the M6500 has a 16GB DDR3 top capacity.

No brainer IMHO.

Sure, if you only care about hardware. ;-)

mac os x is starting to lose its' edge with other OS'es imo - updates have been pretty disappointing since 10.5

So in other words, the one update since then, 10.6, which was most significantly an en masse upgrade of the OS and core apps to 64-bit, was disappointing? I'm thinking wait for 10.7 before passing judgement.

It's not just that 10.6 was low on features but that it also took a long time. And now there's a rumor that 10.7 has been delayed. Having to wait 4-5 years (from 10.5 to 10.7) to get new features is downright Vista-like.

Not give him your money. MBPs are not that special.

What else is available with a similar build quality? Anything besides ThinkPads?

Dell Studio XPS or HP Envy line are good alternatives, depending on what you need. Both are available with higher-res screens and faster (quad core i7) cpus than the mbp, for instance.

The major caveats on the Envy are that it has serious, deep issues preventing Linux from running on it, and it has no displayport or dvi out for driving a 30" monitor.

The Dell's biggest weakness is battery life.

Slight reality check here - I've got an i5 Envy 15 that I bought a month ago, and although it had some problems with Linux for a while, I have no difficulty running it now with Ubuntu 10.04 beta. The issues I'm aware of were:

- Touchpad click buttons don't work, forcing you to double-tap to click

- Weird BIOS caused both TurboBoost (the Intel extension that powers down cores and speeds up others) and ACPI to fuck up, leading to no TB and no heat management, fans ran constantly, very bad news

- Buggy sleep/resume

Points 2 and 3 are fixed in 2.6.33+. Point 1 can be fixed via a patch to the synaptics module, but I just use an external mouse all the time anyway.

I believe you can thank this fellow for many of these fixes: http://www.chizang.net/alex/blog/2009/12/21/linux-on-the-hp-...

Yes, 2 and 3 are what I was referring to. Glad to hear those are fixed!

I owned a Studio XPS 1645 (the Core i7 model). The construction was pretty good for Dell, and the RGBLED screen was gorgeous. However, they clearly rushed the Core i7 version to market without testing power consumption effectively. The supplied power supply was 90W, and the machine drew something like 110W under load. I returned mine, but from what I hear, Dell replaced all of the power supplies. Not sure if that fixed the issue.

Although they made it right, that's the last time I'm going to buy a Dell -- particularly one built on the newest tech. I don't think the QA is there.

I just received my Envy 15 last night. It's a beautifully designed machine but has 2 glaring flaws:

1. The screen only tilts to ~105-110 degrees. This makes it tough to use on your lap or on a short table (commonly found in coffee shops sadly).

2. The AC-DC power supply is bulky. The plug has 3 pins too. Earth is not needed for laptop power supplies! There is no electric shock risk for a laptop user! I was dismayed to find such a hideous power supply bundled with this laptop.

I have the 'first gen' Envy 15 and absolutely love it. If I were to buy a new laptop now I'd go with the new 15" MBP though. The big thing is in the battery life. Sure you have 5-6 hours on the Envy but that's with the big and heavy battery slice attached. The MBP will I'm sure go over 7 hours stock.

Still, I bought my Envy about 6 months ago, so I'm not upset (at least that's what I'll tell myself).

I get about 4h on my 10-days-old mbp battery, fwiw. Apple's benchmarks are as unrealistically optimistic as everyone else's.

(I complained about this to a long-time mac user, and he said "You're probably using it with the display on.")

Maybe the build quality of the thinkpads used to compair but the mbp is much better now and the lenovo's worse. I own a last gen mbp and have also placed 20-30 lenovo's at clients in the past. The are not even close these days.

I've been using Apple gear since '90 or so, and my current (2008) MBP seems to be the lemon of the set. So far: blew a fan, DVD drive and shorted out the battery. Thought the Airport card was toast this morning, but it seems to have come back.

Yeah, it's just a single data point, but when a 12" Powerbook is still going strong (albeit slowly), the series of fails in my latest laptop is depressing. I really, really hope it's a one-off.

Interesting - I have the same anecdote - I have purchased _three_ generations of Macintosh Laptops - 2008, 2005, 2002 - And the last two, unfortunately, have been lemons.

Interesting failure pattern - overheating resulting in CPU stalling resulting in persistent Spinning-beach-ball of Death. The 2008 Airport dies, sporadically, but it has had a good run for the last 3-4 months, so I no longer carry my USB-WiFi dongle (Amazing that they even make one for Macs)

On the flip side, I'm telling myself that the last five years of misery will be worth it when it feels so good to upgrade to a laptop that is flawless (fingers crossed) - think of how amazingly good it will feel to have applications launch, consistently, within 30 seconds. :-)

(Regardless, even with the weird pain, I've never even considered switching back to Windows Laptops. CMD+Space, terminal, Enter is just too perfect to consider doing so.)

I think the Sony Z series looks pretty good, quite lightweight, good keyboard, good speed.

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