Ever since I bought my Power Mac and PowerBook, I’ve fallen in love with OS X. But eventually, even the most beloved hardware needs to be replaced. I skipped the first batch of Intel based Macs, but last week I finally decided to upgrade. As always, things are never as simple as they seem, and therein lies a tale…before we begin though, please bear in mind that this is not a review. These are just some of my impressions after spending a few days with my new MacBook Pro. For a full-blown review, check out PC Magazine’s excellent article on the MacBook Pro.

17-Inch or 15-Inch?





One of the first questions I had to confront was the size of my new laptop. Since I don’t travel much I’d thought that the 17-inch MacBook Pro might be the one for me. Then I heard about the beautiful, bright LED-backlit screens that the 15-inchers had. Wow. Nice! But how come the 17-inch ones didn’t have them? Darn. However, the 17-inch MacBook Pros did have one thing going for them that the 15-inchers didn’t—a gorgeous, 1900 x 1200 high-res screen!

I’d gone to Apple’s online store a zillion times, trying to make up my mind which one I wanted. Finally I decided it was pointless to bother. I needed to see these things in front of me to make up my mind. So off I went to the Apple store at the local mall. First thing I did when I arrived was to find the 17-inch MacBook Pro. Wow, the 1900 x 1200 screen was even better than I thought! It had an amazing amount of screen space! So then I went over to the 15-inch and took a look at it. Not nearly as much screen real estate, obviously but that screen sure was bright! Hmm what to do, what to do?

Then I remembered that I’d pretty much decided that I’d get an iMac after its next redesign/release sometime in the fall (probably). So did I really want a big, bulky 17-inch laptop? What happens if I have to travel? It’s heavier than the 15-inch and it takes up too much space. Ugh. Would I really want to be toting around that 17-inch behemoth? And what about the lack of an LED-backlit screen? Why get an older kind of screen even if it is high resolution?

Ultimately, I decided to by the 15-inch MacBook Pro and I’m glad I did. Continued…