The following is my "rebuttal" to Lloyd's review, which I mostly agree with.
First, two caveats that color my opinions:
- This laptop is a secondary system for me. I do not view it as a desktop replacement.
- I am not doing heavy-duty Noel Carboni-style Photoshop work on this laptop, nor do I ever expect to do so: it's not my style. If you are used to slinging around enormous Photoshop files with fifty layers on them, there's nothing much I can tell you about this laptop that matters to you. If Photoshop is more a tool you resort to rather than the air that you breathe, I will tell you I have no reservations about firing up Photoshop and using it on this laptop when the need arises. (I really don't like doing detail work in Photoshop without my Wacom, so I tend to save retouching and that sort of work for my desktop setup.)
Now
I just went directly from heavily using a 15" MBP (previous generation "Rev. E") for two weeks to heavily using a new 17" MBP for another two weeks, and my conclusion is that the size difference between the 15" and 17" models is probably
negligible for many users. Yes, the 17" unit is physically larger and heavier, but it really doesn't feel like much of a difference in practice.
The ugly truth is that both the 15" and 17" models are big and heavy and either will make your shoulder hurt from carrying them around in a bag. So, is the 15" MBP any more travel-friendly than the 17"? Not for me. Not a bit. Incidentally, I have used the new 17" unit for three straight hours in a coach-class seat on a 737 without any difficulty at all. I was genuinely surprised, because I'd heard all this wailing over the years about how the 17" laptops didn't fit in coach. I suppose that if you have a really large belly, it might get trickier?
My MBP 17" has the build-to-order 320GB 7200rpm hard drive. I do not find responsiveness an issue in day-to-day work with this hard drive. I'd say it feels a lot like my (two year old) Mac Pro.
Lightroom runs pretty well on this MBP. It's slightly less responsive than my Mac Pro, but so far seems perfectly
usable for my purposes (review and lightweight processing of RAW images from the 5DMk1). I will not be attempting to manage my full photo library on this laptop, nor can I vouch for how the unit performs on the significantly larger files coming out of the latest cameras.
The 133dpi matte screen for me is a major win. I wouldn't have it any other way, but it is true that I still have good eyes. Lloyd is correct that, here and there, text can get rather small; some of these situations can be fixed through customization, others cannot.
Lloyd brands the Mini DisplayPort an abomination. I'd say the jury is still out on this new tech. It's certainly inconvenient being forced into being an early adopter, but I bought this MBP assuming I wouldn't be able to connect it to any external monitors and I'm living with that.
The new battery technology is a win for me, so far. I am seeing consistent runs in the neighborhood of 7 hours, and that's with the WIFI on all the time and the screen brightness moderately high. Will there ever come a time when I run out of battery and wish I could swap in a second one? Sure, but there's no way I would ever actually be lugging a replacement around, anyway, so it's irrelevant! I do know people who carry extra laptop batteries, but I've never been one of them. For me, the greatly extended battery life of the built-in battery is more important.
In a related matter, the rigidity and integrity of the machine is
really nice and almost unique. Like the Mac Book Air, it's a pleasing piece of equipment to touch and look at. Mostly, that's the result of the milled aluminum body, but not having a removable battery and other hatches and panels actually makes for tangibly better fit and finish.
What do I not like about this machine? So far, just quibbles:
- I wish there was a USB port on the right side of the unit
- I wish I had a DVI connector instead of a Mini DisplayPort
- I wish I could have ordered a unit without the optical drive (and the slot for it)
Linear Mode
