Apple 15-inch MacBook Pro (mid 2009) User Review Discussion

But aren't the long 6-7hr MBP battery life figures only under OSX? I mean, people are comparing apples to oranges: The T400/T500 run in Windows with switchable power-efficient Intel graphics whereas the MBP is currently forced to use the power-hungry 9600M GT under Windows.

 

MBP is optimized for OS X, T500 is optimized for Windows. That's the way they should be compared in my opinion.

 

You can only compare Apple to Apple. How good is the new iPod? Depends on how much you liked your last iPod.

Thats the way Macs are, in my opinion.

 

In what sense? Mechanism? Because layout is terrible -- how do you make such action on Mac "select all text from here to the end of the document" (i.e. what keys you have to press)?

 

Cmd (Apple key) + A. And if you're using your little finger to press the Cmd key, then you've only got yourself to blame.

 

Hmm, seems apps avoided the trap with fn+ctrl+shift+down . Thank you for the info.

Btw. what external monitor do you have? Apple (glossy) one?

 

Nah. It's the Benq FP241w. Can't afford Apple's displays

 

Thinkpads are pretty nice but they are not as high quality as they used to be. My work issued T400 is well made but certainly not as well made as my T43p that I use for Linux. My T400 battery does not last nearly as long as this laptop btw and I do have the extended Thinkpad battery and the T400 is only a few months old. When I travel I have both the T400 and the MBP with me so I would know how long each lasts under real world conditions.
Anyway I have this same model MacBook Pro. Total cost after $200 rebate from MacMall was $2000 plus no tax meant a savings of $449 from the store price.
This is my second unibody MBP I wanted the nicer screen and battery and fast proc. I upgrade quite often although this was fast even for me.
I was surprised at how much better the screen is. Really noticeable which I didn't expect. I don't much care about the SD slot. Don't know what I will use it for. I'm not going to pry the card out of my camera when I can just connect a cable. I would have preferred an HDMI port or another USB port. But I don't like my laptops festooned with ports so I'm fine. I absolutely love the trackpad and wish every laptop had it. Can't stand PC laptop trackpads now as they all seem too small and limited in functionality. There is a recent patch for the trackpad running Windows btw which corrects the issues the reviewer spoke of. I use VMWare Fusion, Boot Camp and Crossover to run PC apps. Mostly Crossover to run Counterstrike Source which it does quite well and Visio for work stuff. If you are not familiar with Crossover it is basically an improved version of WINE which runs under OS X and does not require Windows to run Windows apps. I am not at all concerned about the battery, I will take the battery life happily and you can in fact replace the battery yourself pretty easily. But I never expect to need to. The Snow Leopard Boot Camp drivers are better then the Leopard Boot Camp drivers btw. Apple let the Leopard Boot Camp drivers languish. I think the reason Windows has worse battery life is because of all the background processes it runs constantly. Not a very efficient OS. Neither of my unibodies got every hot except when playing games. I have had plenty of PC laptops run extremely hot. Snow Leopard just screams on this MBP and is a pleasure to use. My current job does not provide the option of Macs although they are becoming much more common in IT but I use mine at work anyway. Too bad we use Lotus notes at my current consulting gig..otherwise I would just use the built in Exchange connectivity of Snow Leopard and they could keep their laptop. Plus Notes sucks! Outlook has it's issues but Notes...ugh. Long story short there is not other laptop made that I would want over this one. Not even close.

 

I never commented on this one, but that screen is truly phenomenal

 

BTW Budding I forgot to mention..excellent review. I've read lots of them and yours is one of the best. I'm running retail Snow Leopard on mine now instead of the betas and its friggin awesome.

 

That is true, Apple's Leopard Boot Camp drivers probablyhave something to do with this and the inability to switch to the the 9400M certainly does. The Boot Camp Snow Leopard drivers are much better in lots of ways and now that SL is out it would be worth doing a whole new set of measurements. Any way you look at it though Apple's battery life is incredible for a full size laptop and just because a PC notebook can do the same or slightly better takes nothing away from this laptop. With this sort of battery technology I expect you will be seeing "sealed" batteries in other laptops as well.

 

Ha ha, great pic!!! Does cooking an egg on the machine void the warranty?