Note: Moderators, if this post should not be here, please apologies and move it to the right place, or merge it.
This post objective is to help others in the dilemma of the i5 2.4Ghz 2.53Ghz and i7 2.66Ghz, and high resolution antiglare vs. standard resolution glossy.
Screen:
Currently owing the top of the line i7, and after reading a lot about the antiglare and its high resolution I went to the Apple store (twice) to check and compare both screens. I spent around 2.5 h trying to make my mind, looking at different angles, playing movies, launching applications, etc. I was almost giving up in trying to find a solution for this when an apple store rep. talked to me. His suggestion was to look at the same picture on both computers at full screen. He said that for photos and prints, the antiglare image will be closer to what you get in the prints (with out any extra monitor calibration off course). When I started looking at the pictures very closely and with detail, I could see that the clarity and quality of the same picture was better and "crispier" on the antiglare than on the stock glossy resolution. That was my turn point and made my decision on the antiglare high res. There are other reasons why I wanted the antiglare, like the reflections I am getting in my home; but really the point was made once I looked at the clarity of the pictures in the high res screen compared with the standard res.
One point I noticed in the high res screen was that the only application where I could say the fonts were really small and maybe uncomfortable for me was on iWork applications. The icons for the format bar were really small. But in Office, everything seem OK for my eyes (I need glasses for long distance sight).
I can say that by looking at both machines at home, the glossy colors look more vivid, and that the viewing angles are better than the antiglare which looks a little bit like washed off to me. But still, prefer not to have reflections and the crispier pictures.
CPU:
I went ahead and get a refund approval from Amazon and looked for a high res antiglare screen. I found that the options were the i5's and really long waiting for the i7's. I decided that my times of gaming are long in the past (Quake (I, II, III, IV), Doom 3), and that I do not do any really intensive graphic design on my home machine, so therefore, the i7 was an over killing machine for us. I always wanted a Mac, so when the refresh was on the wild, I bought the i7 right away, it is a really nice piece of greatness, but I came quickly to realize that it was indeed too much of what I really needed. Then the options for antiglare were in the i5 and thinking that the 2.53Ghz was the right option, went ahead and order one from MacMall. Later on the day I realized (and after reading a little bit more) that the differences between the 2.53 and the 2.4Ghz are so small for real daily use (one can argue about encoding, super high CPU intensive tasks, etc. that over years of use could save you time, but I am talking bout real use) that even the 2.53 was an overkill again for the price/benefit stand point. Also, the rationale was this: benchmarks (and this is not real daily use) show that even the new i5 2.4 lower end of new Macbook Pros is faster than the once upper 2.8Ghz C2D latest generation Macbook Pro. Some will argue that having the i7 will give longevity to their machines, but just by following this rationale, it doesn't make too much sense. I think that I will see better machines in the future that even the low end products will be faster than todays i7's. The only differences between the i5 2.4 and 2.53 are the CPU speed, HDD capacity (not speed, both being 5400rpm, and amount of video memory. CPU diff in benchmarks show very little difference, video memory is not an issue for me (as explained above), and even when I had the i7 I knew I wanted to change the HDD for a 7200 rpm one, so I already had ordered the 7200 rpm 500GB Hitachi HD20500 IDK/7K from Amazon. Therefore, I went ahead and cancelled the i5 2.53Ghz and order a 2.4Ghz with the high res antiglare.
With the good management of the "sleep" function on Mac OS X it might not be of too much interest the boot times, but I found there is a slower boot time in the 2.4 compared to the 2.66. Now, both HDDs are 5400rpm, the one in the i5 2.4Ghz is a 320GB Toshiba MK3255GSXF and the one in the i7 2.66Ghz is a 500GB Hitachi HTS545050B9SA02. I did it 20 times and the i5 2.4Ghz boot time average was 41 sec and the i7 2.66Ghz average boot time was 28 sec. This really surprised me since I always thought the major factor for the boot time was the HDD and not so much the CPU. But these are real numbers. To be honest, I did this comparison on boot times after I saw a youtube video where a guy compares side to side the i5 2.4Ghz vs the i7 2.66Ghz boot times, without he i7 being faster. Well, it is.
I did a clean install on the 7200 rpm 500GB Hitachi HD20500 IDK/7K since I wanted to have it as new from factory. After I installed Snow Leopard, and all the applications that come in the other DVD, and installed all the current updates I ran the boot time test again. I was very impressed because now the boot time in the i5 2.4Ghz is average 27 sec ! Well, I knew the faster HDD will make an impact, but with puts back the i5 with the i7 !!!
This might sound strange, but another observation was that the temperature was 3 to 5 degC higher on the i5 2.4Ghz than the i7 2.66Ghz. I know this does not make sense, but this was true when leaving both computers with the highest screen brightness, not sleep, not screen off. I let them both sit there for a while, and the results where that 3 to 5 degC difference (measured with smcFanControl and iStat widget). After I open the same Youtube video and let it run on both, the temperatures leveled up, but still sometimes the i5 was still 1 degC hotter than the i7. Must admit that this is a weird result for me since in theory the i5 should consume less energy, therefore less heat produced should come from it. But that is what I got as results. Maybe this is just an isolated expample with my new i5 2.4Ghz.
Finally, I am extremely happy with this final decision and result. I think the bigger resolution is wonderful, and for what we do here at home, the Macbook Pro i5 2.4Ghz is much more than enough, and I could say that it is the case for many people out there. Many other have said this, get a better HDD, even better if it is a SDD (I still think the price/benefit factor is not optimum yet), more ram, and you will have a very fast and responsive machine. Now if you really need the extra punch on CPU and video memory, go for the i7 and better if it is high res. Really the i5 2.53Ghz mid point is not very optimum.
Cheers to all !
K.
This post objective is to help others in the dilemma of the i5 2.4Ghz 2.53Ghz and i7 2.66Ghz, and high resolution antiglare vs. standard resolution glossy.
Screen:
Currently owing the top of the line i7, and after reading a lot about the antiglare and its high resolution I went to the Apple store (twice) to check and compare both screens. I spent around 2.5 h trying to make my mind, looking at different angles, playing movies, launching applications, etc. I was almost giving up in trying to find a solution for this when an apple store rep. talked to me. His suggestion was to look at the same picture on both computers at full screen. He said that for photos and prints, the antiglare image will be closer to what you get in the prints (with out any extra monitor calibration off course). When I started looking at the pictures very closely and with detail, I could see that the clarity and quality of the same picture was better and "crispier" on the antiglare than on the stock glossy resolution. That was my turn point and made my decision on the antiglare high res. There are other reasons why I wanted the antiglare, like the reflections I am getting in my home; but really the point was made once I looked at the clarity of the pictures in the high res screen compared with the standard res.
One point I noticed in the high res screen was that the only application where I could say the fonts were really small and maybe uncomfortable for me was on iWork applications. The icons for the format bar were really small. But in Office, everything seem OK for my eyes (I need glasses for long distance sight).
I can say that by looking at both machines at home, the glossy colors look more vivid, and that the viewing angles are better than the antiglare which looks a little bit like washed off to me. But still, prefer not to have reflections and the crispier pictures.
CPU:
I went ahead and get a refund approval from Amazon and looked for a high res antiglare screen. I found that the options were the i5's and really long waiting for the i7's. I decided that my times of gaming are long in the past (Quake (I, II, III, IV), Doom 3), and that I do not do any really intensive graphic design on my home machine, so therefore, the i7 was an over killing machine for us. I always wanted a Mac, so when the refresh was on the wild, I bought the i7 right away, it is a really nice piece of greatness, but I came quickly to realize that it was indeed too much of what I really needed. Then the options for antiglare were in the i5 and thinking that the 2.53Ghz was the right option, went ahead and order one from MacMall. Later on the day I realized (and after reading a little bit more) that the differences between the 2.53 and the 2.4Ghz are so small for real daily use (one can argue about encoding, super high CPU intensive tasks, etc. that over years of use could save you time, but I am talking bout real use) that even the 2.53 was an overkill again for the price/benefit stand point. Also, the rationale was this: benchmarks (and this is not real daily use) show that even the new i5 2.4 lower end of new Macbook Pros is faster than the once upper 2.8Ghz C2D latest generation Macbook Pro. Some will argue that having the i7 will give longevity to their machines, but just by following this rationale, it doesn't make too much sense. I think that I will see better machines in the future that even the low end products will be faster than todays i7's. The only differences between the i5 2.4 and 2.53 are the CPU speed, HDD capacity (not speed, both being 5400rpm, and amount of video memory. CPU diff in benchmarks show very little difference, video memory is not an issue for me (as explained above), and even when I had the i7 I knew I wanted to change the HDD for a 7200 rpm one, so I already had ordered the 7200 rpm 500GB Hitachi HD20500 IDK/7K from Amazon. Therefore, I went ahead and cancelled the i5 2.53Ghz and order a 2.4Ghz with the high res antiglare.
With the good management of the "sleep" function on Mac OS X it might not be of too much interest the boot times, but I found there is a slower boot time in the 2.4 compared to the 2.66. Now, both HDDs are 5400rpm, the one in the i5 2.4Ghz is a 320GB Toshiba MK3255GSXF and the one in the i7 2.66Ghz is a 500GB Hitachi HTS545050B9SA02. I did it 20 times and the i5 2.4Ghz boot time average was 41 sec and the i7 2.66Ghz average boot time was 28 sec. This really surprised me since I always thought the major factor for the boot time was the HDD and not so much the CPU. But these are real numbers. To be honest, I did this comparison on boot times after I saw a youtube video where a guy compares side to side the i5 2.4Ghz vs the i7 2.66Ghz boot times, without he i7 being faster. Well, it is.
I did a clean install on the 7200 rpm 500GB Hitachi HD20500 IDK/7K since I wanted to have it as new from factory. After I installed Snow Leopard, and all the applications that come in the other DVD, and installed all the current updates I ran the boot time test again. I was very impressed because now the boot time in the i5 2.4Ghz is average 27 sec ! Well, I knew the faster HDD will make an impact, but with puts back the i5 with the i7 !!!
This might sound strange, but another observation was that the temperature was 3 to 5 degC higher on the i5 2.4Ghz than the i7 2.66Ghz. I know this does not make sense, but this was true when leaving both computers with the highest screen brightness, not sleep, not screen off. I let them both sit there for a while, and the results where that 3 to 5 degC difference (measured with smcFanControl and iStat widget). After I open the same Youtube video and let it run on both, the temperatures leveled up, but still sometimes the i5 was still 1 degC hotter than the i7. Must admit that this is a weird result for me since in theory the i5 should consume less energy, therefore less heat produced should come from it. But that is what I got as results. Maybe this is just an isolated expample with my new i5 2.4Ghz.
Finally, I am extremely happy with this final decision and result. I think the bigger resolution is wonderful, and for what we do here at home, the Macbook Pro i5 2.4Ghz is much more than enough, and I could say that it is the case for many people out there. Many other have said this, get a better HDD, even better if it is a SDD (I still think the price/benefit factor is not optimum yet), more ram, and you will have a very fast and responsive machine. Now if you really need the extra punch on CPU and video memory, go for the i7 and better if it is high res. Really the i5 2.53Ghz mid point is not very optimum.
Cheers to all !
K.
