The problem is the more apps you are running, the more likely it is that at least one of them has a memory leak. After a week of running around 30 apps in parallel some mysterious memory leaks accumulate (they don't show up in the Activity monitor), and I usually have a couple of gigabytes of swap files (despite 3 GB RAM). A 7200 rpm drive then really makes a difference.
BTW, I use my Mac close to 100 h per week plugged in and maybe 1 h unplugged. Do I care more about the performance during these 100 h or about the battery life during that occasional week when I might use it for 3 h unplugged?
Getting the 160 GB 7200 rpm drive is a no-brainer. If you really need 200 GB, in a few weeks 200 GB 7200 rpm drives should become available.
I used to always go with the 7200 RPM drive option, but I decided against it last time after reading lots of reports that the speed increase is minimal when compared to the increase in battery depletion. I do a lot of music recording and editing on my 17", and I never noticed any difference with the 5400. All of my plugins and raw files are on external Firewire 800 disks, anyway. Everything else I do is web stuff: image editing, coding, etc. There's no need for 7200 RPM for that.
Now, the 4400 RPM 200GB drive is probably way too slow, and thus not worth it. But 5400 really is fine for anything you'd do with a startup disk. Keeping a percentage of that drive empty (10-15%) and having more RAM is more important than hard drive speed.
I really wish they had a 5400 or 7200 RPM 250 GB drive option at this point. I'm constantly running low on space with all the iTunes music and videos I keep buying. It's clear that we're reaching the limits of how much you can cram onto a spinning disk for portables.
This is exactly the update I've been waiting for. My current laptop (PB 1.67GHz) has been wheezing away for a while. It's still got a bit of go in it, but nothing compared to this. Battery life is down to about half an hour now too.
It's definitely time to go MacIntel. I just ordered the 15".
Can't wait
You're the market that is going to upgrade. You have an older machine and you want to go to Intel. Good decision, IMO.
Quote:
Originally Posted by meelash
Regarding the hard drive speeds, there are two things that affect real world speed, both directly size of the hard drive and RPM speed. So, for example a 200 GB 4500 RPM harddrive is faster than a 100 GB 4500 RPM harddrive. If you research this further you should be able to find the exact relationship.
P.S. Or wait around and someone around here can answer it for you... I think you're first post just got buried in all the frenzied posting so noone responded.
That cannot be right. I have done some searching and found nothing to confirm your supposition of larger drives being faster. It's certainly counter-intuitive.
Quote:
Originally Posted by k2snowboarder07
The overall look hasn't changed however of course the speed is much faster. As for the LED lighting, its a huge difference. I would say its about 50% brighter than the previous screen if I could guess. Also because it now has LED, its slightly lighter in weight. I compared the new one and the previous MBP and it has a weight difference. I actually had to ask the people at the store to bring one out so I could see it. I'm very happy I waited till now to buy one instead of a month ago. I can't wait to get one now.
What do you mean it's "much faster." Because they told you so? And compared to what machine? Also, I seriously doubt "50%" brighter. If it was, Apple would have trumpeted such a stat. Seems to me you're drooling like a fanboy.
Quote:
Originally Posted by gostan
I have not shut down my PowerBook since the last time I went on vacation. I like faster and all of the available bells and whistles, but the 7200 has to eat up more battery time on a portable than the speed benefits that I would receive from the faster HD. Otherwise, I would have waited the 6 weeks to bto.
Stan
I don't think you'd actually use that much more battery, unless you rely on battery to do hard drive intensive tasks, in which case you can kiss you battery life goodbye no matter what the RPM is. And I've personally found that hard drive speed makes a big difference.
What do you mean it's "much faster." Because they told you so? And compared to what machine? Also, I seriously doubt "50%" brighter. If it was, Apple would have trumpeted such a stat. Seems to me you're drooling like a fanboy.
He does seem a bit enthusiastic. It'll be interesting to see what Shetline thinks of his upgrade.
I dont understand why they arent using Robson. Maybe they are waiting for leopard to come out which could be optimized for it. Seems strange to me.
Probably because the technology isn't all it is cracked up to be. Mind you not that the implementation is bad just that it really doesn't offer up a lot of flexibility. It would be far better for Apple to simply implement two drive slots with one reserved for a SATA flash drive. User and other variable data could be put on a normal SATA drive.
There are a couple of advantages. One is that the solid state drive is a purchased component that can be supplied by many vendors. So as technology advances you can upgrade as is required.
The second advantage is that this would allows for user upgrades and configurations.
Quote:
I'll be interested to see how much power savings there are with the new chipset and LED backlight.
It would be funny if the Pro ended up with better battery life than the MacBook.
Quote:
I'm glad they went with nVidia also, they are so far ahead of AMD right now its not even funny.
Well it nothing else they are ahead of the curve with Linux drivers. Still not open source but at least they supply something worth while. This will result in even more up take of MacBook Pro as a Linux platform. The performance isn't bad either.
Honestly, unless you have old equipment or want the high res 17", I fail to see the excitement. The speeds are barely improved. The specs are similar to the current gen. I have a last rev Macbook (current until today) and I see nothing that excites me other than maybe the LED display. No reason to upgrade for me, not that I expected there to be.
Well this is a much better revision of the machine than the MacBook update of a few weeks ago. Much Much Much better in fact.
As far as speeds go there is more to it than the clocks. How well Santa Rosa will support the chip sets is yet to be seen, but there is a lot of room for optimism. It will be interesting to see how these Pro's test out.
Personally I see lots of reasons to put money down for this machine relative to Apples Mac book. The problem is it will have significant competition from much lower cost machines. All in all though I like it, atleast based on info I've looked at so far.
That cannot be right. I have done some searching and found nothing to confirm your supposition of larger drives being faster. It's certainly counter-intuitive.
Counter-intuitive? Um, no. Unless you are assuming that higher-capacity = more platters.
In the case where capacity is increased by adding platters, said HDDs are not faster.
However, let's think about a dual-platter 100 GB drive, and a dual-platter 160 GB drive, both of the same RPM. Each platter in the 100 GB drive contains 50 GB, and each platter in the 160 GB drive contains 80 GB. However, the platters are physically the same size. So 1 byte of data on the 160 GB drive takes up physically less room than 1 byte of data on the 100 GB drive. This means that moving the reading/writing mechanism a fixed distance covers more data in the 160 GB drive and the throughput is therefore higher than that of the 100 GB drive.
a couple things bugging me about ppls expectations:
hi def DVD players - does anyone really want to pay a $400 premium for one, esp. before the format war is over? it will be a while before a B-R or HD_DVD player is cheap enough to be included in the standard price. the engaget link provided earlier in the thread discusses the possibility of a B-R Player with Leopard.
however, then of course people will complain about not having a burner. until Apple fully supports HiDef DVD in DVDSP, i don't believe it will be an option. so at least Jan 08 for that one, i think.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Haggar
I would settle for:
User replaceable hard drive.
User replaceable optical drive with second battery / second hard drive options.
Apple laptop dock with true docking connector.
Magnetic latch without display hooks.
Higher resolution iSight camera with at least 1280x1024 true optical resolution.
just a little dig, but no 8-bit screen with 100% NTSC gamut that you've been on about for a while now?
i'm not even sure it would be worth it, considering NTSC = "Never Twice the Same Color"
People have harped on about the 6-bit v 8-bit screens, however i am yet to see anyone provide examples of equivalent machines with said 8-bit LCDs. how much would they increase the price on an MBP if they were to use them?
That cannot be right. I have done some searching and found nothing to confirm your supposition of larger drives being faster. It's certainly counter-intuitive.
You certainly didn't search very thoroughly.
It's actually intuitive, since the rpm rating is not a data throughput rating, it is an actual physical speed at which the hd spins. So if one revolution of the harddrive platter contains more data, than that means that each revolution will read more data so, for a given number of revolutions per minute, more data will be read per minute.
Getting the 160 GB 7200 rpm drive is a no-brainer. If you really need 200 GB, in a few weeks 200 GB 7200 rpm drives should become available.
Where did you hear this? I don't follow the news regarding harddrives very closely, but it seems to me that jumps in laptop space take a while. When you factor in how long it takes Apple to "jump the jump" it will probably be until the macbook pro update before new hard drive options become available.
I am the grad student. I would prefer the larger screen, but I'm on a budget. I mean, I COULD pay for it (2250 after student discount and applecare....2400 when I get the 8gb nano and iwork) but i'm really interested in longevity. I want something that will still zip in 4-6 years, play my $h!tloads of music, let me edit my cute little webpage (http://www.users.muohio.edu/lingembr/index1.html) and do photoshop for that purpose. Along with writing lots of papers....general ilife stuff too.
Save your money and go Macbook. I have one and am a student and it is perfect. The ONLY caveat would be if you play any games. In that case, go mbp. Otherwise save your money cause a mbp is overkill for your needs.
hi def DVD players - does anyone really want to pay a $400 premium for one, esp. before the format war is over? it will be a while before a B-R or HD_DVD player is cheap enough to be included in the standard price. the engaget link provided earlier in the thread discusses the possibility of a B-R Player with Leopard.
You're right, it is a bit expensive, but the format war seems to be winding down. Most seem to agree now that Blu-Ray will win, judging on sales figures (running 2 to 1 in favor of Blu-Ray discs in recent months) plus fading movie studio support for HD-DVD.
It's widely speculated that the plug will be pulled on HD-DVD sometime in 2008. It's not a slam dunk of course, but it doesn't bode well.
Got mine today! The 15.4" LED 2.4ghz with 256MB nVidia 8600m and all that...
The screen is noticeably brighter than my 1 week old MacBook and 6 month old MacBook Pro. It's not ridiculously rich in colour however it seems very true to real life, unlike a Sony XBrite or equivilent. I went for the matte version. The glossy just isn't right for graphic design etc...
It's really fast in photoshop CS3 and logic so far. The HD gets fairly warm but not too bad.
I'm very, very happy. I wanted the 17" but the LED option on the 15" sold me.
It's widely speculated that the plug will be pulled on HD-DVD sometime in 2008. It's not a slam dunk of course, but it doesn't bode well.
urk... someone better tell the europeans then! i haven't looked at "that" thread in a while, so not sure where the to-ing and fro-ing is at. we'll see...
Hi, I'm going to purchase a mbp. I want the 7200 rpm harddisk, but I don't want to wait four weeks for it. So, my question is: does the mbp have an user replacable harddisk?(I red somewhere that replacing the harddisk will void your warranty)And if so, is it possible to put a harddisk of 7200 rpm in it? Must it be from a specific brand?
Quote:
Originally Posted by crentist
Don't forget your AppleCare Protection Plan
Hmmm, The Care Protection Plan isn't that cheap. Is it worth the money?
Well it nothing else they are ahead of the curve with Linux drivers. Still not open source but at least they supply something worth while. This will result in even more up take of MacBook Pro as a Linux platform. The performance isn't bad either.
Dave
Amen. I have to say, if I were still on my PB, as opposed to a couple month old MBP, as a linux user, I'd be upgrading *now*.
In my experience, I've found that a faster hard disk has a major effect on the overall snappiness of the system. Unless something is seriously lacking in another area, this is the best upgrade you can make. It's much more noticeable than a CPU speed increment, for both mundane and disk-intensive tasks. As far as power consumption goes, Seagate's documentation for the Momentus 5400.3 and 7200.2 both specify 0.8W idle.
Hi, I'm going to purchase a mbp. I want the 7200 rpm harddisk, but I don't want to wait four weeks for it. So, my question is: does the mbp have an user replacable harddisk?(I red somewhere that replacing the harddisk will void your warranty)And if so, is it possible to put a harddisk of 7200 rpm in it? Must it be from a specific brand?
Hmmm, The Care Protection Plan isn't that cheap. Is it worth the money?
Regards,
Mathijs.(netherlands :P )
Basically, you can do anything that you want. The waranty policy on installing memory in the previous MacBook Pro's is
WARNING: Apple recommends that you have an WARNING: Apple recommends that you have an Apple-certified technician install memory. Consult the service and support information that came with your computer for information about how to contact Apple for service. If you attempt to install memory and damage your equipment, such damage is not covered by the limited warranty on your computer.
I believe that the opperative word is and. Considering, it doen't take a genius to understand that one could say virtually anything as being damaged simply by scratching one of the screws as you were attempting to open it, or they could deem the cause due to an unapproved brand. How would you prove otherwise.
I would imagine that once the 7200's are available, I wouldn't suggest any other that an Apple approved brand and having it done by an Apple-certified technician. In addition, AppleCare is also a no-brainer, especially if your livelyhood depends upon it. My take, be thankful if you never have to use it.
Now I know that others may not share the same opinion and declare the savings warrant the venture. However, the laptops in particular are extremely compact. One mistake and voila?
Comments
The problem is the more apps you are running, the more likely it is that at least one of them has a memory leak. After a week of running around 30 apps in parallel some mysterious memory leaks accumulate (they don't show up in the Activity monitor), and I usually have a couple of gigabytes of swap files (despite 3 GB RAM). A 7200 rpm drive then really makes a difference.
BTW, I use my Mac close to 100 h per week plugged in and maybe 1 h unplugged. Do I care more about the performance during these 100 h or about the battery life during that occasional week when I might use it for 3 h unplugged?
Getting the 160 GB 7200 rpm drive is a no-brainer. If you really need 200 GB, in a few weeks 200 GB 7200 rpm drives should become available.
I used to always go with the 7200 RPM drive option, but I decided against it last time after reading lots of reports that the speed increase is minimal when compared to the increase in battery depletion. I do a lot of music recording and editing on my 17", and I never noticed any difference with the 5400. All of my plugins and raw files are on external Firewire 800 disks, anyway. Everything else I do is web stuff: image editing, coding, etc. There's no need for 7200 RPM for that.
Now, the 4400 RPM 200GB drive is probably way too slow, and thus not worth it. But 5400 really is fine for anything you'd do with a startup disk. Keeping a percentage of that drive empty (10-15%) and having more RAM is more important than hard drive speed.
I really wish they had a 5400 or 7200 RPM 250 GB drive option at this point. I'm constantly running low on space with all the iTunes music and videos I keep buying. It's clear that we're reaching the limits of how much you can cram onto a spinning disk for portables.
This is exactly the update I've been waiting for. My current laptop (PB 1.67GHz) has been wheezing away for a while. It's still got a bit of go in it, but nothing compared to this. Battery life is down to about half an hour now too.
It's definitely time to go MacIntel. I just ordered the 15".
Can't wait
You're the market that is going to upgrade. You have an older machine and you want to go to Intel. Good decision, IMO.
Regarding the hard drive speeds, there are two things that affect real world speed, both directly size of the hard drive and RPM speed. So, for example a 200 GB 4500 RPM harddrive is faster than a 100 GB 4500 RPM harddrive. If you research this further you should be able to find the exact relationship.
P.S. Or wait around and someone around here can answer it for you... I think you're first post just got buried in all the frenzied posting so noone responded.
That cannot be right. I have done some searching and found nothing to confirm your supposition of larger drives being faster. It's certainly counter-intuitive.
The overall look hasn't changed however of course the speed is much faster. As for the LED lighting, its a huge difference. I would say its about 50% brighter than the previous screen if I could guess. Also because it now has LED, its slightly lighter in weight. I compared the new one and the previous MBP and it has a weight difference. I actually had to ask the people at the store to bring one out so I could see it. I'm very happy I waited till now to buy one instead of a month ago. I can't wait to get one now.
What do you mean it's "much faster." Because they told you so? And compared to what machine? Also, I seriously doubt "50%" brighter. If it was, Apple would have trumpeted such a stat. Seems to me you're drooling like a fanboy.
I have not shut down my PowerBook since the last time I went on vacation. I like faster and all of the available bells and whistles, but the 7200 has to eat up more battery time on a portable than the speed benefits that I would receive from the faster HD. Otherwise, I would have waited the 6 weeks to bto.
Stan
I don't think you'd actually use that much more battery, unless you rely on battery to do hard drive intensive tasks, in which case you can kiss you battery life goodbye no matter what the RPM is. And I've personally found that hard drive speed makes a big difference.
b.) All MacBook (Pro and non-Pro) screens (glossy and non-glossy) are 6 bit.
are PC laptop screens 8-bit?
What do you mean it's "much faster." Because they told you so? And compared to what machine? Also, I seriously doubt "50%" brighter. If it was, Apple would have trumpeted such a stat. Seems to me you're drooling like a fanboy.
He does seem a bit enthusiastic. It'll be interesting to see what Shetline thinks of his upgrade.
I dont understand why they arent using Robson. Maybe they are waiting for leopard to come out which could be optimized for it. Seems strange to me.
Probably because the technology isn't all it is cracked up to be. Mind you not that the implementation is bad just that it really doesn't offer up a lot of flexibility. It would be far better for Apple to simply implement two drive slots with one reserved for a SATA flash drive. User and other variable data could be put on a normal SATA drive.
There are a couple of advantages. One is that the solid state drive is a purchased component that can be supplied by many vendors. So as technology advances you can upgrade as is required.
The second advantage is that this would allows for user upgrades and configurations.
I'll be interested to see how much power savings there are with the new chipset and LED backlight.
It would be funny if the Pro ended up with better battery life than the MacBook.
I'm glad they went with nVidia also, they are so far ahead of AMD right now its not even funny.
Well it nothing else they are ahead of the curve with Linux drivers. Still not open source but at least they supply something worth while. This will result in even more up take of MacBook Pro as a Linux platform. The performance isn't bad either.
Dave
are PC laptop screens 8-bit?
I am not aware of any laptops that use 8 bit screens. There are probably a few behemoths out there that do.
Honestly, unless you have old equipment or want the high res 17", I fail to see the excitement. The speeds are barely improved. The specs are similar to the current gen. I have a last rev Macbook (current until today) and I see nothing that excites me other than maybe the LED display. No reason to upgrade for me, not that I expected there to be.
Well this is a much better revision of the machine than the MacBook update of a few weeks ago. Much Much Much better in fact.
As far as speeds go there is more to it than the clocks. How well Santa Rosa will support the chip sets is yet to be seen, but there is a lot of room for optimism. It will be interesting to see how these Pro's test out.
Personally I see lots of reasons to put money down for this machine relative to Apples Mac book. The problem is it will have significant competition from much lower cost machines. All in all though I like it, atleast based on info I've looked at so far.
Dave
That cannot be right. I have done some searching and found nothing to confirm your supposition of larger drives being faster. It's certainly counter-intuitive.
Counter-intuitive? Um, no. Unless you are assuming that higher-capacity = more platters.
In the case where capacity is increased by adding platters, said HDDs are not faster.
However, let's think about a dual-platter 100 GB drive, and a dual-platter 160 GB drive, both of the same RPM. Each platter in the 100 GB drive contains 50 GB, and each platter in the 160 GB drive contains 80 GB. However, the platters are physically the same size. So 1 byte of data on the 160 GB drive takes up physically less room than 1 byte of data on the 100 GB drive. This means that moving the reading/writing mechanism a fixed distance covers more data in the 160 GB drive and the throughput is therefore higher than that of the 100 GB drive.
hi def DVD players - does anyone really want to pay a $400 premium for one, esp. before the format war is over? it will be a while before a B-R or HD_DVD player is cheap enough to be included in the standard price. the engaget link provided earlier in the thread discusses the possibility of a B-R Player with Leopard.
however, then of course people will complain about not having a burner. until Apple fully supports HiDef DVD in DVDSP, i don't believe it will be an option. so at least Jan 08 for that one, i think.
I would settle for:
User replaceable hard drive.
User replaceable optical drive with second battery / second hard drive options.
Apple laptop dock with true docking connector.
Magnetic latch without display hooks.
Higher resolution iSight camera with at least 1280x1024 true optical resolution.
just a little dig, but no 8-bit screen with 100% NTSC gamut that you've been on about for a while now?
i'm not even sure it would be worth it, considering NTSC = "Never Twice the Same Color"
People have harped on about the 6-bit v 8-bit screens, however i am yet to see anyone provide examples of equivalent machines with said 8-bit LCDs. how much would they increase the price on an MBP if they were to use them?
That cannot be right. I have done some searching and found nothing to confirm your supposition of larger drives being faster. It's certainly counter-intuitive.
You certainly didn't search very thoroughly.
It's actually intuitive, since the rpm rating is not a data throughput rating, it is an actual physical speed at which the hd spins. So if one revolution of the harddrive platter contains more data, than that means that each revolution will read more data so, for a given number of revolutions per minute, more data will be read per minute.
Getting the 160 GB 7200 rpm drive is a no-brainer. If you really need 200 GB, in a few weeks 200 GB 7200 rpm drives should become available.
Where did you hear this? I don't follow the news regarding harddrives very closely, but it seems to me that jumps in laptop space take a while. When you factor in how long it takes Apple to "jump the jump" it will probably be until the macbook pro update before new hard drive options become available.
I am the grad student. I would prefer the larger screen, but I'm on a budget. I mean, I COULD pay for it (2250 after student discount and applecare....2400 when I get the 8gb nano and iwork) but i'm really interested in longevity. I want something that will still zip in 4-6 years, play my $h!tloads of music, let me edit my cute little webpage (http://www.users.muohio.edu/lingembr/index1.html) and do photoshop for that purpose. Along with writing lots of papers....general ilife stuff too.
Save your money and go Macbook. I have one and am a student and it is perfect. The ONLY caveat would be if you play any games. In that case, go mbp. Otherwise save your money cause a mbp is overkill for your needs.
hi def DVD players - does anyone really want to pay a $400 premium for one, esp. before the format war is over? it will be a while before a B-R or HD_DVD player is cheap enough to be included in the standard price. the engaget link provided earlier in the thread discusses the possibility of a B-R Player with Leopard.
You're right, it is a bit expensive, but the format war seems to be winding down. Most seem to agree now that Blu-Ray will win, judging on sales figures (running 2 to 1 in favor of Blu-Ray discs in recent months) plus fading movie studio support for HD-DVD.
It's widely speculated that the plug will be pulled on HD-DVD sometime in 2008. It's not a slam dunk of course, but it doesn't bode well.
.
The screen is noticeably brighter than my 1 week old MacBook and 6 month old MacBook Pro. It's not ridiculously rich in colour however it seems very true to real life, unlike a Sony XBrite or equivilent. I went for the matte version. The glossy just isn't right for graphic design etc...
It's really fast in photoshop CS3 and logic so far. The HD gets fairly warm but not too bad.
I'm very, very happy. I wanted the 17" but the LED option on the 15" sold me.
It's widely speculated that the plug will be pulled on HD-DVD sometime in 2008. It's not a slam dunk of course, but it doesn't bode well.
urk... someone better tell the europeans then! i haven't looked at "that" thread in a while, so not sure where the to-ing and fro-ing is at. we'll see...
Don't forget your AppleCare Protection Plan
Hmmm, The Care Protection Plan isn't that cheap. Is it worth the money?
Regards,
Mathijs.(netherlands :P )
Well it nothing else they are ahead of the curve with Linux drivers. Still not open source but at least they supply something worth while. This will result in even more up take of MacBook Pro as a Linux platform. The performance isn't bad either.
Dave
Amen. I have to say, if I were still on my PB, as opposed to a couple month old MBP, as a linux user, I'd be upgrading *now*.
Hi, I'm going to purchase a mbp. I want the 7200 rpm harddisk, but I don't want to wait four weeks for it. So, my question is: does the mbp have an user replacable harddisk?(I red somewhere that replacing the harddisk will void your warranty)And if so, is it possible to put a harddisk of 7200 rpm in it? Must it be from a specific brand?
Hmmm, The Care Protection Plan isn't that cheap. Is it worth the money?
Regards,
Mathijs.(netherlands :P )
Basically, you can do anything that you want. The waranty policy on installing memory in the previous MacBook Pro's is
WARNING: Apple recommends that you have an WARNING: Apple recommends that you have an Apple-certified technician install memory. Consult the service and support information that came with your computer for information about how to contact Apple for service. If you attempt to install memory and damage your equipment, such damage is not covered by the limited warranty on your computer.
I believe that the opperative word is and. Considering, it doen't take a genius to understand that one could say virtually anything as being damaged simply by scratching one of the screws as you were attempting to open it, or they could deem the cause due to an unapproved brand. How would you prove otherwise.
I would imagine that once the 7200's are available, I wouldn't suggest any other that an Apple approved brand and having it done by an Apple-certified technician. In addition, AppleCare is also a no-brainer, especially if your livelyhood depends upon it. My take, be thankful if you never have to use it.
Now I know that others may not share the same opinion and declare the savings warrant the venture. However, the laptops in particular are extremely compact. One mistake and voila?