I received my 15" i7 last week (Thursday) and I've pretty much been using it ever since. Also working on my Ph.D and typing up my proposal.
This is my first Mac ever so it took sometime to get used to the new window management but I love this machine. Truly a pleasure to use.
I opted for the i7 with Hi-Res glossy upgrade and the 128GB SSD upgrade.
1) A machine with an SSD is probably the most enjoyable thing to use. I mean, this machine wakes from sleep instantly, i can quit programs without worry about having to open them again, and everything just moves like a bat out of hell.
2) Hi-Res Glossy for me is where it's at. People that do graphics talk about how the Matte is better and they are probably right. However, I'm a programmer getting my PHD in Computer Science. For programming I believe higher contrast is where it's at. I don't care about color accuracy as much as I care about having to look at a screen and making text pop out and look great matters to me. Also, I feel like everything looks much more crisp. Now, my comparison is a 22" Dell Matte Monitor that I've always felt was a crappy monitor but reviews about it raved and it was better than the CRT I had before. However, compared to looking at the laptop screen, the 22" looks much more cartoon-like to me. The windows don't look as crisp and things just don't pop to me. I know it's personal preference but I do love the glossy look. If I buy another external display the next one will be glossy as I don't have problems with glare in my office and I love the sharpness of them.
3) I haven't had a chance to really push the i7 yet except for the couple times I've watched YouTube. I'm really not joking here, because YouTube pegs the **** out of my CPU just burning up cycles. I'm not sure why that is but you'd think that'd be something they'd fix... Anyways, I bought the i7 for two reasons. A) I can always upgrade the memory and harddrive but can't upgrade the processor. B) Eventually I'll be compiling a lot more and doing simulations when I'm going to really love that extra performance. As a side-note I am also looking at doing some OpenCL development so I wanted the added video memory.
4) I tend to be too lazy to plugin my power adapter during the day and this machine has never run out of juice on me. Thus far I've been pretty much just surfing the web, listening to iTunes, and editing and compiling LaTeX in a Textmate window. But still, I am getting at least 6 hours and I've got the display at about 3/4, most of the time only one-two notches below the max. I calibrated the battery after about 2 days of use so maybe that helped. Coconut Battery says my battery is about a week old but 2 charge cycles or something like that. I don't know the lingo or care to learn, I just know how long it runs. Pretty amazing. My ASUS 1000HA netbook doing the same tasks doesn't last as long. I get it's a smaller machine with a smaller battery and less processing power but I'd say a more powerful machine that can get the same battery life is doing pretty good.
I could be mixing my feelings about the machine with my feelings about being able to finally use OSX which I love. Just the fact I feel like I'm on Linux machine yet the native apps run beautiful and look great. But the machine itself is amazing. Inertial scrolling is great. The trackpad is awesome. People complain about Apple making certain design decisions about hardware (330M) and taking so long but for the size and the amount of battery life I get out of this thing, I don't think you could get that from any other laptop.
This machine has its downfalls but I'd say most of them are just weird power-user things that I want OSX to do that aren't built in. My biggest gripe early on was getting used to the keyboard layout. I initially wanted the Control and FN buttons switched, but now that I'm getting used to it I see why they're not. You can get your pinking to curl under and hit control (which is easy to push) rather than having to like curl AND twist your hand to hit the function. I think it's probably a lot easier on my pinky. Poor pinky.
Hope this helps others. I wrote a lot. BLARG
This is my first Mac ever so it took sometime to get used to the new window management but I love this machine. Truly a pleasure to use.
I opted for the i7 with Hi-Res glossy upgrade and the 128GB SSD upgrade.
1) A machine with an SSD is probably the most enjoyable thing to use. I mean, this machine wakes from sleep instantly, i can quit programs without worry about having to open them again, and everything just moves like a bat out of hell.
2) Hi-Res Glossy for me is where it's at. People that do graphics talk about how the Matte is better and they are probably right. However, I'm a programmer getting my PHD in Computer Science. For programming I believe higher contrast is where it's at. I don't care about color accuracy as much as I care about having to look at a screen and making text pop out and look great matters to me. Also, I feel like everything looks much more crisp. Now, my comparison is a 22" Dell Matte Monitor that I've always felt was a crappy monitor but reviews about it raved and it was better than the CRT I had before. However, compared to looking at the laptop screen, the 22" looks much more cartoon-like to me. The windows don't look as crisp and things just don't pop to me. I know it's personal preference but I do love the glossy look. If I buy another external display the next one will be glossy as I don't have problems with glare in my office and I love the sharpness of them.
3) I haven't had a chance to really push the i7 yet except for the couple times I've watched YouTube. I'm really not joking here, because YouTube pegs the **** out of my CPU just burning up cycles. I'm not sure why that is but you'd think that'd be something they'd fix... Anyways, I bought the i7 for two reasons. A) I can always upgrade the memory and harddrive but can't upgrade the processor. B) Eventually I'll be compiling a lot more and doing simulations when I'm going to really love that extra performance. As a side-note I am also looking at doing some OpenCL development so I wanted the added video memory.
4) I tend to be too lazy to plugin my power adapter during the day and this machine has never run out of juice on me. Thus far I've been pretty much just surfing the web, listening to iTunes, and editing and compiling LaTeX in a Textmate window. But still, I am getting at least 6 hours and I've got the display at about 3/4, most of the time only one-two notches below the max. I calibrated the battery after about 2 days of use so maybe that helped. Coconut Battery says my battery is about a week old but 2 charge cycles or something like that. I don't know the lingo or care to learn, I just know how long it runs. Pretty amazing. My ASUS 1000HA netbook doing the same tasks doesn't last as long. I get it's a smaller machine with a smaller battery and less processing power but I'd say a more powerful machine that can get the same battery life is doing pretty good.
I could be mixing my feelings about the machine with my feelings about being able to finally use OSX which I love. Just the fact I feel like I'm on Linux machine yet the native apps run beautiful and look great. But the machine itself is amazing. Inertial scrolling is great. The trackpad is awesome. People complain about Apple making certain design decisions about hardware (330M) and taking so long but for the size and the amount of battery life I get out of this thing, I don't think you could get that from any other laptop.
This machine has its downfalls but I'd say most of them are just weird power-user things that I want OSX to do that aren't built in. My biggest gripe early on was getting used to the keyboard layout. I initially wanted the Control and FN buttons switched, but now that I'm getting used to it I see why they're not. You can get your pinking to curl under and hit control (which is easy to push) rather than having to like curl AND twist your hand to hit the function. I think it's probably a lot easier on my pinky. Poor pinky.
Hope this helps others. I wrote a lot. BLARG
