Thoughts on a new MacBook Pro?

[steuard]

Anyone know a good reason why I shouldn't get (via startup funds at work) one of the new MacBook Pro 15" i7 models? More importantly, does anyone have advice on

1) glossy vs. matte screen?

2) standard hard drive vs. solid state drive?

I'm leaning toward the cheaper glossy screen and the much cheaper standard hard drive at this point. (I've heard oddly negative things about Apple's solid state drive technology, in fact.)

(A more extreme possibility would be to get a 13" model instead, for the greater portability and slightly better battery life. But I think I want something with pretty high end processing power so I can use it for research when I'm away from work. We've got our cute netbook if we really want portability.)

[Edit: Fixed typo in first sentence: shouldN'T!]

Comments

[beth_leonard]

Funny you should ask... a mailing list I'm on for DVD authors just had a long debate about glossy vs. matt screen.

One reference they pointed to is here:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Apple/?p=2417&tag=nl.e539

Another poster said he was very happy with the glossy choice, and still another reports,

I only have limited experience, with a "traditional" screen on my 2nd
generation MacBook and a super glossy glass screen on my iPhone, but i
have to say that i can read my iPhone screen in any amount of ambient
light, while my MacBook will be overpowered in a brightly lit office with
large windows. I tried to use my MacBook in the car the other day, couldnt
even begin to see the screen.


It seems to me the problem isnt glossy v. non but rather the overall
brightness of the screen. Just like a two-way mirror or looking through a
house window from outside on a bright day, if ambient light levels are too
high, it will over power the "display" light source and you will see
reflections...and vice versa.

When my iPhones super glossy screen is off, i could almost use it as a
mirror, but when it is on, i can read it without a reflection outside at
high noon in direct sun. My non-glossy MacBook is a definite no-go
outside even in indirect sunlight.

This appears to be a matter of personal preference, and possibly usage environment.

For hard drives, I haven't seen as much about this, several people commented in different threads about putting in their own drives. I think traditional is just fine. Apple has learned that they have a certain percentage of their user base who, when given the choice of $X, $2X, and $4X, will buy the product in the $4X space, because, "It's more expensive and I don't know what it means, but it must be the best." In this case I think that solid state may allow you to eek a little more performance out of your battery life, but if you're frequently plugged in this may not matter much to you.

--Beth

[steuard.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the helpful comments. I was glad to see the pros and cons of the screen styles discussed, and since it seems to come down to personal preference and I don't especially have one (based on my experience thus far) I've opted for cheap. Same for the solid state drive: why spend the money?

I'm looking forward to the new computer! (Now, how much use should I make of the automatic migration assistant? I guess I've got plenty of time to play with that.)

[kirin]

I think I made a post when I used migration assistant for my last Mac upgrade - the short version is that it was awesome and set up everything how I wanted it seamlessly, except for the bit where it broke at the end. It just hung on the very last step (claimed it was trying to set the time zone or something? Nothing that made sense) and I had to hard-power-cycle everything. But since all the copying was done, I just re-ran bare-bones setup on the new machine using a temp account name, enabled the "me" account which had already been copied over as the default account, switched over, and everything was there. Hopefully that won't happen for you, in which case I recommend it whole-heartedly. ;)

[beth_leonard]

I used the migration assistant for my new mac too. The first time, that is. It totally failed to move my iCal data over correctly, which was one of the main reasons we got another mac (so Jon and I could be on the same calendaring system). It failed in weird and non-obvious ways, too. Many of my events were correct, but some of my weekly recurring events just went *poof* with no explanation of where they'd gone, others in the same calendar appeared just fine.

In short, I didn't trust the results, so I copied files I wanted over by hand and reinstalled all software I cared about manually. I waited until after I owned an iPod touch and then used that to transfer my calendar and contacts data between machines. I'm sure that also got rid of some cruft I didn't need too.

YMMV.
--Beth

[kirin]

Huh, that sounds pretty weird (and extremely annoying), but I don't use iCal, so I can't provide a data point on that front. For me, it set up everything correctly with iTunes, Mail, Safari,and contact data, which saved me quite a bit of time. The only thing I really had to do was weed out and/or upgrade apps that were pre-Intel binaries.

[beth_leonard]

I'm guessing there's something non-standard in my Calendar file somewhere. There were problems exporting and importing some, but not all of the iCal calendars when I tried to do it manually. The iPod method of transfer seemed to work however. (At least, I don't think I've forgotten to go to any events that went poof that I didn't notice... one never really knows...)

--Beth

[(Anonymous)]

I hate my glossy MBP screen. Useful as a mirror, not so useful if you want to see your screen, especially if you are a person who uses dark backgrounds. I'd definitely go matte.

SSD's have much higher sustained read speeds. If you think you'd be reading large files on a regular basis, they _might_ be worth it, but probably not.

You might want to shell out the $400 for 8GB of RAM. That's less than you'll have to shell out later if you decide to upgrade from 4 to 8 GB. Just logging in and starting Firefox, KMail, and Adium will consume well over 2GB of RAM. That's not leaving too much room for a serious Mathematica session.