New 2011 Macbook Pro

 Apple, Geek  No Responses »
Mar 082011
 

Shortly after my last post where I was having trouble selling my Macbook Pro I actually managed to find a sane buyer. I had to deliver it which required driving half an hour there and back but I didn’t mind as it gave me the cash needed to put towards the 2011 Macbook. As I’m lucky enough to qualify for higher education discount it only required me put £75 towards the new laptop. Seeing as it’s going to take me around five years to finish this Open University course, I can’t see why I can’t just upgrade each year and have the latest and greatest for next to nothing.

Overall it’s pretty similar to last year’s model. The only cosmetic difference is the Thunderbolt logo taking the place of the display icon next to the mini DisplayPort. (edit. I’ve just realised that it would make sense to mention that Thunderbolt is a new interface with a transfer speed to 10 Gbps.)

 

The real changes are internal. Apple have finally dumped the ageing and positively (by computer standards) ancient Core 2 Duo in favour of Core i5s and i7s. I only picked up the low end 13″ Macbook Pro which is powered by an i5. Accordingly to early benchmarks the low end 13″ is as fast as last year’s top end 17″ in terms of processing. This is all thanks to Intel’s new Sandy Bridge processors that were only released a week or so ago.

As with last year my main complaint is with the GPU. Last year Apple used an Nvidia integrated graphics chip that wasn’t spectacular but it got the job done. Due to the increasingly annoying licensing issues between Nvidia and Intel, this year we don’t even get an Nvidia GPU. We’re stuck with the GPU integrated into the processor. I need to fire up Portal and see how things run but I’m not really expecting much and I wouldn’t even be surprised if graphics performance was worse than last year.

Really that’s all there is to say. Everything from last year’s post still stands as overall the laptop hasn’t really changed very much. The design is still great and the build quality is superb. The multitouch trackpad is still a joy to use and made even better with BetterTouchTool. £75 well spent I’d say!

Macbook Pro Upgrade Failure

 Apple, Geek  No Responses »
Mar 022011
 

After Apple released the new Macbook Pros last week I thought I’d see if I could sell my last generation Macbook Pro and pay the difference to upgrade. This turned out to be a lot harder than I originally thought.

I’m fairly happy with my laptop but the fact that the new low end 13″ Macbook Pro is now as fast as the last generation’s high end. I think that’s probably a fair bit more future proof than the 2010′s already a little outdated Core 2 Duo.

Anyway, so I placed an advert on the Milton Keynes Gumtree. After a load of attempted scams and no real offers I decided to post on the London Gumtree and just accept that I might have to jump on a train down there to meet. Even with the extra traffic I still only really got scammers and people offering ridiculously low prices. The few people that actually seemed interested still tried to screw me out of money or kept changing the plan on meeting until I just gave up. I could go with eBay but the commission taken by eBay and Paypal really start to eat into any money you make.

In the end it just ended up being a lot more hassle than I was prepared to put up with. I still might put it up again in a month or so and see if I get any interest. The i5 in the new Macbook sounds a lot more fun than a Core 2 Duo.

So instead upgrading the laptop I just decided to pick up a stupidly fast hard drive to give me my tech fix. I installed my new Seagate Momentus XT yesterday and things seem to be a good amount faster.

Now to spend a few minutes lusting over the new iPad 2…