Apple's 15-in. MacBook Pro now faster -- and cheaper

[dhilipkumar]

Apple's 15-in. MacBook Pro now faster -- and cheaper

Apple unveiled the iPhone 3G S, talked up its new iPhone 3.0 operating system as well as its Snow Leopard desktop OS, and unleashed a slew of updated laptops. It even made two of its MacBooks into MacBook Pro models

Lots of 'Pro' options

The 15-in. model now comes in three varieties, all of them with 4GB of RAM  which you can double to 8GB for a hefty $1,000  and hard drives with between 250GB and 500GB of space, or solid state disk drives of 128GB or 256GB.

For $300 more, the 2.8GHz model can be ordered with a 3.06GHz chip  the first time Apple has offered a processor beyond 3GHz in a laptop. It's also an option on the 17-in. MacBook Pro.

[dhilipkumar]

Built-in batteries across the line

Less obvious is the non-removable lithium-polymer battery, which offers substantially more time on juice than earlier models. The 17-in. MacBook Pro, which comes with the same 2.8GHz processor as the top-end 15-in.

Apple says it can power the 17-in. model for eight hours, and I easily got about 6.5 hours of use without trying very hard when reviewing that particular laptop earlier this year.


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Hard drive options abound


Other than the RAM, about the only thing that can be replaced now is the hard drive. It's user accessible only after removing 10 very tiny screws on the underside of the chassis and lifting off the bottom. That's a little more work than on previous models, where the battery and hard drive could be reached by unlatching part of the bottom case.

[dhilipkumar]

Updated LED screens

The new MacBook Pros all have updated LED screens, offering a 60% wider color gamut. That means they're more vivid, according to Apple.

Usually, claims of brighter, more richer-looking screens depend on the eye of the beholder, but in this case, I saw a discernible difference between this generation and the last.

The result would be stunning  especially on the 1920-by-1200-pixel 17-in. model.


Apple continues to use two graphics cards in its higher-end Pro models.

This one has the Nvidia 9600M GT and the Nvidia 9400M. The 9400 is an integrated GPU that helps extend the battery life; it uses 256MB of shared video RAM. The 9600M GT is the workhorse, offering either 256MB or 512MB of discrete video RAM that gamers and videographers will want to use.

[dhoni]

this is really amazing
and it cost also better cheaper