Review by MissionMan
I have a confession to make, this is my third new Mac laptop in about 2 1/2 years so I think I may be an addict. It started the first year when I got a 13" Macbook Black, then 10 months later the unibodies were released and I had to have a 15" Macbook Pro...now the awe inspiring 17" with the price drops and upgrades. This time however I had a really good excuse for the upgrade because I never sold the 15" - my wife needed a new laptop and I just sold her on the idea of taking over the 15" and now her old toshiba will be tossed into the junk heap for use by windows centric guests staying at our house.
Coming from a 15" unibody I had a sneaking suspicion I was obviously going to like it but I didn't think I was going to be overly impressed with the actual speed of the 17" because it was only a slight upgrade in spec from my older machine (larger processor and a 7200 RPM drive). When I starting looking at purchasing it, I was looking at an SSD but some complications set in and eventually sanity prevailed. I decided to wait until the 500GB SSD's are released at a normal price level. Yes, I know there are already 500GB SSD's (there are 1TB PureSI in fact) but I'd like to have the speed improvements without a price tag that requires me to sell my body on a street corner because the only people willing to buy my body are the kind likely to use it for medical experiments.
The sales saga - JB Hifi and Myer
I headed the direction of JB Hifi purely due to pricing but that was exactly where my problems started and gives a clear indication of why price should not always be the consideration when spending $6500 on a laptop. JB Hifi Elizabeth Street wanted 50% deposit upfront for the BTO and of course neglected to mention this in the quote they sent me - I was prepared to offer $1000 which is my company eftpos card limit because I didn't have the company checkbook with me. I was not expecting to pay more than that at the time of ordering because I heard that BTO's generally require 10% on ordering. I offered to pay the $1000 and transfer the balance when I got back to the office but was told that even with the screendump electronic proof of electronic transfer, they would only place the order with Apple when the funds were received into their account, a further delay of about 3 days.
One of the MacBook Pro's was for a guy at our office who needed it as soon as he could get it to prepare it for an overseas assignment so an extra 3 day delay in the BTO's wasn't good enough. I was a little gobsmacked at the lack of flexibility by JB Hifi. In a day and age where retailers are desparate for business, you'd think that a $1000 deposit and an electronic transfer would be enough, particularly when the actual goods only arrive in 10 working days time - its not like I'm walking out the door with them, but for JB Hifi, obviously not. Did they honestly think I was going to pay $1000, then fake a transfer and then do a runner for laptops I haven't received yet? What the fuck? Anyway, I consider it a good reason for me not to want to do business with them again.
I threw away the idea of a JB Hifi order and I ordered the MacBook Pro's from Myer Lonsdale after I walked in and offered the deal to the guy if he price matched the order and after some attempts to haggle which I ignored. That however is where Myer's service level ends - trying to get information on delivery dates or finding anyone there who can check the status of a BTO is about as much fun as waxing your ass! You phone, the Apple guy isn't there, then he is but he doesn't know how to get it so you have to wait for the "other" Apple guy. Eventually someone call the Apple retail help and got me and ETA but it wasn't fun. In short, if you want to get your goods urgently or know the status of your BTO, avoid Myer. Eventually the laptops arrived and collection of them took another painful two hours. All attempts to bargain with Myer's staff and pay with plastic beads instead of cash (which is what JB Hifi were obviously worried about when they wouldn't accept my order) were fobbed off successfully by the salesman and we paid for the goods using regular Australian dollars.
The moral of the story? If you want the laptops quickly, find a reputable dealer.
Unpackaging
Anyone out there who has purchased a Macbook Pro will understand how difficult it is to hold yourself back from ripping the box open to play with your new toy immediately upon receiving it. To wait until I had a camera to photograph the unboxing would be comparable self control to coming home and finding Keira Knightly and Angelina Jolie naked on your bed in a seductive embrace, and pausing to go fetch yourself a beer from the fridge first. Sadly for you, I did not have such self control and hence there are no unboxing photos. Fortunately I kept the box so if you want the photos of just the box, let me know, but whatever you do, don't search for "Angelina Jolie" and "box" in the same string or you may come up with something you weren't (or were) expecting.
There is nothing sweeter than the unpackaging of a Apple laptop (except for maybe unpackaging a bigger, better Apple laptop to replace your current one). It's just something about the way Apple packages their laptops that make the experience that much sweeter than the unboxing of any Dell, Toshiba or IBM. Apple makes it feel like you just bought a really top rate laptop. Call it a lack of buyers remorse at just having spent enough to keep a small African village fed for a year, but right now, I feel like I just fed an entire African village, or maybe like I just got Angelina Jolie and Madonna to do it and adopt all the orphan kids under 12. Basically what I'm saying is it feels good...very good...like warm and fuzzy really really good.
I'd love to say I had an official unboxing ceremony with red tape and lots of celebrities but I'm too lazy to photoshop even that. I contemplated photoshopping a bottle breaking with a christening but its Monday night and I'm just too lazy so its not going to happen. I can offer you a picture of some celebrities I would have invited to the christening if that helps.
Starting Up
The intro video for starting up a new Apple is exciting if you've never had a Mac before. The whole music video intro wow's you and makes you feel like you're flying through space and if you're really new to it, you could actually feel yourself tilting from side to side as you fly through space....wwwweeeeeeeeeee....fuckkkk offf...if you're onto your third macbook in 3 years like me, the video can't end quickly enough. Apple seriously need to consider adding some options when you first start your machine which include "Is this your first Mac? Would you like a long drawn out intro that makes you feel warm and fuzzy about becoming a new Mac owner?" or "I'm a Mac addict on to my 3rd macbook, skip the bloody intro and let me play with my Mac right now!".
As much as migration assistant is nice, the excrutiating wait while you leave migration assistant running is torturous. I eventually had to force myself to go out to dinner so I wasn't tempted to pick it up, put it down and play with the trackpad 2000 times whilst the migration assistant was underway. My wife looked quite disturbed at the way I kept staring at the laptop. In typical geek fashion, I decided to reinstall my entire machine because when I got my first Mac, I experimented with a whole lot of crap on it when I first got Mac. It was that whole "Um, what app do I use for this? Let me try all of them and see which I like more!". In the end I loaded about a hundred completely useless apps because they were on the list of "100 OSX apps you must have" which should really have read "100 apps you can't do without if you have no social life and are still living at home with your parents at age 40" because at least 50% of them had no particular use other than to waste a lot of my time and bring my wife closer to divorcing me.
[caption id="attachment_2570" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Look at the size of that track-pad!"]
[/caption]This time around, I wanted my Mac to be a virgin, untouched and unsoiled just like Britney Spears in her early years. I had two weeks to wait from the time I purchased the BTO order so I had time to install OSX to an external firewire 160GB HDD I had lying around. I refined my list of required apps, installed all my software onto the external, activated them and then tested them to make sure everything was running properly. All I really had to do after that was migrate my documents, libraries, mail and configuration in different apps (so if anyone wants to know anything about migrating a specific library, ask me) and I was on my way. Even with the extended migration, the whole process probably took about 2.5 hours...not bad for 300GB's worth of data and OS's although that excludes my time for reinstalling OSX and all the software on the external. I could have taken my time doing over a two week period, but no. I won't even compare that to the 2-3 day experience buying a new laptop on Windows which I equate to being the same as cleaning your balls with sandpaper and lemon juice: the frustrating phone calls to Microsoft and Adobe to get new activation codes, clearing out OEM junk...you know how it is. I've also made the decision to keep my 160GB external with all the software on it so I can potentially use it in future if I need to start fresh again.
I won't say much about OSX, I like it, I've been using it, nothing new - but I'm still waiting for Snow Leopard and I've placed my pre-order for a whole $15 including shipping. I'm sitting smug thinking of what the Windows users will be paying.
Size does matter
Sure you can fool yourself into thinking it doesn't but size does matter and those who say it doesn't are the same people whose girlfriends and wives have to tell them that on a regular basis to make them feel adequate. People bitch about the size of the 17" but I have to say the laptop itself is not really that big and definitely not as big as the 17" of yester-year.
Okay, so the basic 15" and 17" are pretty much the same other than the whole 17" thing and the option of a non-glossy finish. The 17" non-glossy screen is still a work of art. Its crisp, clear and looks absolutely beautiful, it still has a slight gloss on it, but not enough to pull reflections. From what I understand, its supposed to be 24 bit whilst the 15" is 18 bit. I'm hardly an expert in screen quality so I can't really comment on the technical differences but dammit the 17" looks good. Its a considerable improvement over the 15" glossy and the extra screen space is awesome.
Rob Galbraith has a nice comparison between the different size laptops so you can see that the difference between the 15" and 17" in not that big. I would have taken the picture myself but I wasn't going to buy a 13" just for the review and a professional photographer is probably better equipped for the task. You can check it out on his blog.
Obviously If you're using a 13", of course the 17" is going to seem like a monster. If you're looking at a compact travel laptop to go with your iMac, then most people looking for the compact size and portability of the 13" probably aren't going to want or even consider a 17" anyway. If on the other hand you're looking at a 15" in the higher specs, with the reduced price difference between the 15" and the 17", the 17" should really be a consideration, particularly those who use their laptops all day for business use. Sure its bigger and heavier but its not that much bigger, its not thicker, and its half a kg of weight for a trip to work with the benefit of having and extra 2 inches for an entire day's work.
If you hate lugging laptops around, get a trolley or a backpack. If 0.5kg's (thats effectively the same weight as a 500ml coke) is going to be that much more of an issue to carry around, then you should probably spend the extra $400 you would have spent on upgrading to the 17" to buy a gym contract and work those guns. For travel, its a little larger to lug around in a plane's economy class, but can anyone here actually tell me they spend more than 1% of their time in planes? I filled a passport up full in 2 years and I wasn't spending that much time actually in planes so squashing up a little more for 99% of benefit whilst having a larger screen is hardly a sacrifice.
Finding bags may be harder, but there are still plenty of bags around to cater for the 17" however its not like they're impossible to find, you may just have to spend an extra 30 minutes searching, or God forbid you actually have to post a question on Mactalk with "What's the best laptop bag for a Macbook Pro 17?" and then wait for the people to pile on the responses and give you a 100 suggestions to start with. I purchased the Moshi Codex for my 15" (now my wife's) and my 17" and I can still fit the 17" into my Lowepro backpack and a separate day to day shoulder bag for travel to customers. Incidentally, I still rate the Moshi Codex as the best sleeve available for Macbook's and would highly recommend it for anyone considering one.
The Laptop itself
Coming from the 15", there is not a lot to add to the 15" review I did previously. The construction is the same - top of the range. Firewire, 3 USB's, Expresscard (yes! take that you 13" & 15" bogans) and 5 speakers. The 5 speaker part I am not 100% sure on, its not like anyone buys a 17" to replace their Harman Kardon sound system, but apparently Apple found the urgent need to dump Expresscard in their 15" laptops and add 5 speakers to the 17". Who knows - someone felt that it was important to have 5 separate sets of sound coming out of their 17" piece of aluminium with a screen on it. Maybe it makes the whole lying in bed with a laptop on your lap home theatre experience that much more memorable.
[caption id="attachment_2569" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Yeah, I still have an expresscard slot...suffer 15"er's"]
[/caption]I'm honestly still surprised they haven't added a non-glossy option for the 15" but after the SD card addition, I guess the 15" is becoming less pro-like every day. Because I had the old unibody 15", the only major difference with the 17" over my previous 15" is the new battery system (now standard on the newer 15"'s anyway) which is supposed to offer about 8 hours of battery life under Apple's weird browsing conditions, or 4-5 hours under realistic usage. I haven't had too many issues with my battery life on my old Macbook Pro so this really doesn't affect me too much, but obviously any extra battery life is a bonus for people travelling or for the odd occasion that you find yourself without a power adapter option. If you've ever driven 45 minutes to a client and then realised you left your power adapter at home and wished for extra battery life while squinting at my screen on 10% brightness, you'll appreciate it.
Performance
The performance jump between the 2.4 500GB 5400 and the 2.8 500GB 7200 is actually surprisingly big. I'm not sure how much of it can be attributed to the 7200 and how much to the .4 increase in processor but I have to say it was much better than I thought. I could say that part of it was probably as a result of cleaning up some of the crap off my old laptop, but even comparing the two side by side after I cleaned up the 15" for my wife I can see a substantial difference in their performance. At this point, I'm quite glad that I didn't go with the SSD because I've still had a substantial increase in performance without the cost of an SSD and I'll get to turbo charge this machine (or its replacement) in a year or so when I get a more economically priced, higher performance 500GB SSD.
Conclusion
The 17" is worth every penny. Highly recommended. I don't think I'll be headed back to a 15" very soon.
MacTalk reviews the MacBook Pro 17"