Forums | MacLife

I haven't seen any evidence that anyone else has noticed, so I'm going to point something out that might change some minds concerning the preference to buy 15.4" instead of 17". Go build each on the apple.com website and equip them exactly the same. The 17" comes with a faster DVD burner and a larger monitor for $100 less! I wonder what's up with that? Someone at Apple drop the ball or what???   

$3099:
    * 2.16GHz Intel Core Duo
    * 2GB 667 DDR2 - 2x1GB SO-DIMMs
    * 100GB Serial ATA drive @ 7200 rpm
    * SuperDrive 8x (DVD+R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
    * Backlit Keyboard/Mac OS - U.S. English
    * AirPort Extreme Card & Bluetooth
    * 17-inch TFT Display

$3199:
# 2.16GHz Intel Core Duo
# 2GB 667 DDR2 - 2x1GB SO-DIMMs
# 100GB Serial ATA drive @ 7200 rpm
# SuperDrive (DVD±RW/CD-RW)
# AirPort Extreme Card & Bluetooth
# Backlit Keyboard/Mac OS - U.S. English
# 15.4-inch TFT Display

I have a 2.o ghz MacBook Pro and hardly ever see the processor bars get up above half.  I played Warcraft III (not universal) cranked up on full last night and still didn't max out the processor when I checked back on activity monitor once I had finnished.  Doubt it would make much of a difference.  I get that Warcraft isn't the most stressful of games, but still, running on rosetta, this impressed me.

I have had this thing for a week and I am very impressed.  Stuff running in rosetta is noticably quicker than my iMac 1.25ghz G4 (I now play Warcraft III with every setting maxed, the iMac was on medium).  Stuff running on universal binary is great. Still, have to wait for other applications though..

Spinner

Jeffois wrote:

Anyone know if the speed diff between the 1.83, 2.0, and 2.16 is noticeable?  Or is it the kind of thing that you can measure, but in real-world use, it's no biggie?

Getting ready to buy, not sure which configuration to go with...

I am sure that the 2.16 is faster... but to give you an idea of how much faster these 'books are:  I have been making rips of my DVD library with handbrake... coding to MP4 with two passes at an average rate of 1200 k/sec rips at 60 fps.... AND  I can surf, watch movies, code/compile whatever AT THE SAME TIME.

This is on my 2.0gig MBP with 2gigs of ram and ripping the movie to an external 7200 firewire drive.

I am blown away at how much better computing is on the Mac now.    Of course, I would love it to be 10 or 15x faster...but then, who wouldn't

I'm moving from a PB G4, so based on what I've read in mags and online, I'm expecting a nice boost.   My local dealer had a very good deal on a 1.83, so I took it, and I'm asking him to install an extra gig o' RAM, for a total of 2 gigs.  I'll be in Rosetta quite a bit, with Word and Excel, and I figured you can never be too rich or have too much RAM.