Apple Releases Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro

[macman2790]

Man i just don't know if i should wait another 4-6 months for santa rosa or not. Next spring i'll be starting courses for a CS degree and i want something that'll last me throughout 5 years of college since i'm either going for dual CS/Elec. eng. or for a masters in CS.

The one thing that i really want is the extra ram that santa rosa will bring. does anyone know how well 64 bit apps will run on 32 bit addresable memory thats supported in the current chipset?

Also if i decide to buy the current revision will it slow the actual performance down if i decided to install 3gb of ram since it is not dual channel? I know the more ram the more apps i can run, but would it actually perform slightly slower than the 2gb dual channel ram?

I also hope theres an 802.11n card like the imacs, that would probably just give me one more reason to buy one and just go for it.

 

[PeterC.]

Considering the hard drive is at a lower RPM - that's less power consumption there. Likewise, everything I've read says the Core 2 Duo has equal or less power consumption (average).

So I doubt battery life will be *much* longer, but probably some (15-30 mins, maybe?)

I think it's going to be around 5min give or take, and I'm guessing take. 15 minutes is noticable and 30 min is a huge difference.

 

[PeterC.]

Can anyone explain why there was a need to eliminate the 7200rpm option from the 15'' ? It is one of the upgrades I was looking most forward to in conjunction with core 2 duo. I mean don't get me wrong, I am still thrilled about this addition, but just struggling to understand the subtraction

HEAT? Seems like one of Apple's band-aid aproaches to the heat issue brought up by many owners.

 

[markw10]

Car Charger?

I know that the airline adapter won't work with car chargers. My question, is there a car charger available for it? Even if it's 3rd party that's fine as long as it works. I travel some by plane but obvoiusly could get much more use out of a car charger.

 

[PeterC.]

Man i just don't know if i should wait another 4-6 months for santa rosa or not. Next spring i'll be starting courses for a CS degree and i want something that'll last me throughout 5 years of college since i'm either going for dual CS/Elec. eng. or for a masters in CS.

The one thing that i really want is the extra ram that santa rosa will bring. does anyone know how well 64 bit apps will run on 32 bit addresable memory thats supported in the current chipset?

Also if i decide to buy the current revision will it slow the actual performance down if i decided to install 3gb of ram since it is not dual channel? I know the more ram the more apps i can run, but would it actually perform slightly slower than the 2gb dual channel ram?

I also hope theres an 802.11n card like the imacs, that would probably just give me one more reason to buy one and just go for it.

You know, you shouldn't think that Santo Rosa is right around the corner. I thought Merom was right around the corner in July and look at it now being introduced in the MBP today! Who knows how long before Apple switches to Santa Rosa? Like the adage goes, "get it when you need it". I have to add though that if there is something around the corner you should wait WHITHIN REASON. That 3 month wait was definitely bordering on rationality but thank god I can get my MBP now!

Like the

 

[PeterC.]

I know that the airline adapter won't work with car chargers. My question, is there a car charger available for it? Even if it's 3rd party that's fine as long as it works. I travel some by plane but obvoiusly could get much more use out of a car charger.

No, not yet anyway.

You can always buy a DC/AC Power inverter. I use it all the time. It's a little cluttered in the car at times when you have someone sitting in the passanger seat.

 

[phuong]

whats santa rosa?

i think Santa Rosa is a kind of chipset for laptop computers, probably 8 core like the Clovertown for the MP.
Unfortunately for you, its name is like the name of a city, so it's hard to Google for it.

 

[digitalbiker]

The one thing that i really want is the extra ram that santa rosa will bring. does anyone know how well 64 bit apps will run on 32 bit addresable memory thats supported in the current chipset?

Also if i decide to buy the current revision will it slow the actual performance down if i decided to install 3gb of ram since it is not dual channel? I know the more ram the more apps i can run, but would it actually perform slightly slower than the 2gb dual channel ram?

I also hope theres an 802.11n card like the imacs, that would probably just give me one more reason to buy one and just go for it.

Personally I don't think these are big enough issues to hold out on your purchase. Considering Leopard isn't even out yet which will fully support your 64 bit app. And then 64 bit apps aren't even out yet.

On top of that the 64 bit app should run at full speed with your 3GB's of memory. Your app could conceivably be memory starved if it was a real memory hog but it is hard to say at this point which apps might be effected by this.

The bus speed on the Santa Rosa Platform is 800Mhz vs. the current 667 bus speed but considering this is a mobile platform with slower HDD, and GPU subsystem I wouldn't think that would be much of a bottleneck.

I am not sure about the dual channel single channel question. Don't they all operate at the same speed? The Dual channel bus just allows a 2GB configuration rather than a 1 GB configuration but I wouldn't think it would slow the whole system down just because you have memory in the single channel bank.

I'm with you on the Wi-Fi, I hope that it is a 802.11n spec card that Tiger sees as 802.11 B/G like the new imac. But I guess the jury is still out on that one. I could easily live without 802.11n though, considering the spec hasn't even been determined yet.

 

[kettle]

perpendicular

Can anyone explain why there was a need to eliminate the 7200rpm option from the 15'' ? It is one of the upgrades I was looking most forward to in conjunction with core 2 duo. I mean don't get me wrong, I am still thrilled about this addition, but just struggling to understand the subtraction

I think the word you are looking for is 'perpendicular'.

(These threads get so long that I sometimes wish that there was a 'what we know' key facts at the top of every page. It was save trawling through a hundred miles of 'murky' water for a few sparkly snags of information.)

The hard drive that Apple use is 'reportedly' faster at reading and writing data when compared to other 5400 drives. The head is 'perpendicular' to the disk platter rather than 'longitudinal'.

It's a good idea because it does more for less power.

The difference is supposed to be hard to notice when compared to a 'normal' 7200 drive over the life and 'fill' of the drive. The 5400 spends longer in the efficient part of it's curve of fast to slow transfer speed than a much smaller 7200 drive.

I also think that 'paging out' data to hard drive is far more acceptable these days than it was when narrower bottle necks were much more painful in day to day use.

As for the actual subtraction of the option, I can only imagine that it has something to do with the pricing of bulk component orders. Channelling customer choices so that there is more control in predicting left over parts or worse a shortage of parts. Everyone wants their order to be here yesterday.

 

[Chundles]

i think Santa Rosa is a kind of chipset for laptop computers, probably 8 core like the Clovertown for the MP.
Unfortunately for you, its name is like the name of a city, so it's hard to Google for it.

Santa Rosa is a chipset. It includes the Merom processor, an 800MT/s bus speed, Draft 2.0 802.11n wireless (802.11n won't be ratified till 2008), Robson NAND flash caching of the Hard Drive.

There are no mobile chips with more than 2 cores on the product lineup for at least the next year.

 

[macman2790]

i hope they didn't underclock the gpu this time, that wouldn't bother me much because i'd probably just overclock it in windows hoping my pants don't catch on fire

 

[Solid Bacon]

So does the 5400/7200 comparable speed thing apply to the 120GB hard drive to, or only the 160GB version? I don't think I really need 160GB on the main drive. Seems like the 100GB 7200 RPM drive would be optimal for me, but I'll shell out for the 160GB drive if it offers better performance the the 120GB one and if the 7200RPM is never made available.

 

[xPismo]

Santa Rosa is a chipset. It includes the Merom processor, an 800MT/s bus speed, Draft 2.0 802.11n wireless (802.11n won't be ratified till 2008), Robson NAND flash caching of the Hard Drive.

Wow! That is a killer piece of kit. I havn't been paying attention that far out. Its great to see nand flash / chipset components being designed together like this. It won't keep me from upgrading when the time comes though.

 

[Multimedia]

Heat Made Apple Lose The 7200rpm HD In 15" MBP

Can anyone explain why there was a need to eliminate the 7200rpm option from the 15'' ? It is one of the upgrades I was looking most forward to in conjunction with core 2 duo. I mean don't get me wrong, I am still thrilled about this addition, but just struggling to understand the subtraction

Probably because they generate too much heat in the smaller 15" enclosure. I think you'll find the 160GB 5400 is equally as fast as the 100GB 7200 due to higher platter data density and the Seagate perpendicular technology. So I wouldn't worry about it. Just order the 160 option.

 

[reflex]

It not only would allow instant boot start times but could also be used for dramatic power savings. You could allow your HDD to sleep while the NAND memory acted as a huge cache for your HDD. Then when access outside of cache was needed the HDD would instantly wake-up. Battery life might be dramatically better. As in an extra hour or two instead of the current 3 or 4.

I'm not sure about this. As I imagine it, the hdd would be waking up an awful lot.

 

[reflex]

Whoa NO!!!!!

Yes, setting up a separate partition will make time machine work. But that is lunacy! The whole point of backing up, is at a bare minimum it has to be a different disk. Even better if it is a disk you don't take with you (and thus lose at the same time).

All the time people back up to the same disk and then guess what happens when you lose the disk!

The way Apple presented it, Time Machine is not a typical backup. The main benefit for some people would be to be able to retrieve older versions of files, or files lost because of an unintended deletion. For this purpose, the same disk would be sufficient.

Of course it could also be used as an incremental backup, in which case an external disk is highly desirable.

 

[AppliedVisual]

Santa Rosa is a chipset. It includes the Merom processor, an 800MT/s bus speed, Draft 2.0 802.11n wireless (802.11n won't be ratified till 2008), Robson NAND flash caching of the Hard Drive.

There are no mobile chips with more than 2 cores on the product lineup for at least the next year.

Actually, Crestline is the name of the i965 mobile chipset that will be part of Santa Rosa. Santa Rosa is a platform specification that includes all those things listed, or at least is reported to include them. Intel has not finalized, nor made any official commitments for Santa Rosa outside of NDA. 802.11n should be finalized sometime next spring or early summer, but no one knows for sure... At the current rate of success it's having, 2008 may not be far fetched.

Wikipedia has a pretty good entry for Intel's Centrino specs and the Santa Rosa Platform

 

[reflex]

Can anyone explain why there was a need to eliminate the 7200rpm option from the 15'' ? It is one of the upgrades I was looking most forward to in conjunction with core 2 duo. I mean don't get me wrong, I am still thrilled about this addition, but just struggling to understand the subtraction

Apart from the other explanations already offered, it might just be because they wanted to start at 120GB. So far, I haven't seen any 7200rpm laptop drives above 100GB.

 

[iViking]

I just have a feeling that this CPU whine, and moo, and all those problems, are going to happen again and then everyone who ran out and bought it will die a little inside.

There's a bad thought just before bed time.

I hope that doesn't turn out to be the case...

 

[108]

So who has one already????

 

[steve_hill4]

In terms of specs, here's what you can get in an HP Pavilion dv6000t for $1263:

Windows XP Media Center
Intel(R) Core(TM) 2 Duo processor T7200 (2.00 GHz)
15.4" WXGA BrightView Widescreen!!
256MB NVIDIA(R) GeForce(R) Go 7400
Built-in Microphone + Webcam
1.0GB DDR2 SDRAM (2x512MB)
120 GB 5400 RPM SATA Hard Drive
8X DVD+/-R/RW w/Double Layer Support

But the HPs are definitely NOT slim computers like the MBPs (you can go check them out at Best Buy). I don't know of any PC makers that are producing anything as slim as the MBPs, so it makes comparisons hard. But in terms of "specs", there you have it. Interestingly, the HPs even offer integrated webcams now, so I was actually able to spec the above computer to something very, very close to the MBPs. I couldn't find an option for integrated Bluetooth, though...

They're certainly not as comfortable to use either, (having sold these and used them a fair bit). The touchpad feels too shiny and reminds me of running my finger through treacle, the chasis is so poorly built compared to the MBP that whenever you touch it, it seems to just bend in, you don't have an option easy to find for swithcing on say bluetooth alone, (controlled by the wi-fi switch and you need to enable bluetooth through the system tray and go into view all connections and disable wi-fi manually), as well as lots of other minor problems. However, most I talk to don't want to pay almost twice as much for a similarly specced Mac, (new hp dv6157 is similar to new MBP in specs, but is £799 compared to £1349), even if there are other obvious advantages. That's life.

 

[moonzilla]

as far as i can tell, no one. i wonder when apple will commence shipping of the first batch.

 

[Marx55]

Are these MacBook Pro Merom or Conroe?

Are these MacBook Pro Merom or Conroe?

Any link to such information?

Thanks.

 

[MagicBoy]

Try reading the thread...

Here's a clue - a Conroe MBP will probably glow red underneath...

 

[japasneezemonk]

P.S. To reiterate: sure HD TELEVISIONS will be glossy to make the picture look sharper. But for professionals who actually EDIT digital content, glossy is really not necessary and most likely not going to happen.

P.P.S. Movie Theaters should really look into going glossy too.

A quote off of COMPUTER ARTS MAGAZINE regarding the glossy screen on the MBP,...

"some people find that the colour fidelity isn’t as precise as it needs to be for high-quality print work."