“If you’ve been reading me closely in recent months, you know I’m becoming more and more interested in Apple Computer Inc.’s impressive Mac OS X operating system — and its notebook hardware,” Scot Finnie reports for Computerworld. “I took the 17-in. MacBook Pro… and have been working on a long-term review for the past three weeks or so. A couple of months back, I broke down and bought a MacBook Pro 15.4-in. Intel Core Duo 2-GHz machine, so I’m very familiar with the particulars.”
“For me, the best aspect of the 17-in. version of Apple’s new MacBook Pro line is the additional vertical screen real estate it affords over the 15.4-inch display. The almost 1 in. of added height of the LCD and the larger 1,680-by-1,050-pixel resolution (as opposed to the smaller MacBook Pro’s 1,440-by-900-pixel resolution) cuts way back on your need to scroll documents and Web pages,” Finnie reports. “By the same token, the biggest drawback to the MacBook Pro 17 is the QE II expanse on your lap and the 6.8-lb. heft. The mitigating factor? The darn thing is still a scant 1 in. thick, and it still fits just fine in my briefcase. I’ve been commuting back and forth with three notebooks in my briefcase (a Microsoft WinHEC bag) for the past few weeks, so I know exactly how portable the MacBook Pro 17 is. It’s actually easier to tote around than my new 15.4-in. Dell Inspiron E1505. In fact, stacking the MacBook Pro 15 atop the MacBook Pro 17 beside the Dell Inspiron, only the MacBook Pro 15 LCD assembly pokes up above the height of the Inspiron — just the base of the Dell (not including its LCD, is higher than the MacBook Pro. For me, that’s a profound difference.”
Finnie writes, “What do I really think? My colleague Ken Mingis just bought one straight out. And it’s hard to argue with the gorgeous screen, rip-snorting performance and the many extras this model offers over it’s smaller MacBook Pro brethren. The only question becomes: How big is too big for you? I have a ready answer to that question. My next computer is a 17-in. MacBook Pro with a glossy screen. Because as far as I’m concerned, you can never get too much screen real estate. And the fact that I can run 1,680-by-1,050 on a bright, easy-on-the-eyes 17-in. display like this one is, well, notebook perfection. You gotta grab that when it comes along.”
Much more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Brooklyn NYC” for the heads up.]
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