Heat and more of mid 2009 15,4" 2.53 MBP?

[nph]

How is the previous generation MBP, specifically the 2.55 version with the NVIDIA 9400 card only when it comes to:
- Heat
- Real life battery time
- speed

I have seen this one with the anti-glare screen which makes me interested to evaluate compared to the new one.

Any insight from owners of this machine?

Thanks

 

[mgartner0622]

Hello-
Although I don't own the 15" I do own the same spec 13"

Heat-
The unit does get hot with any graphics intensive apps, or even watching a web site with videos (like hulu)
By hot I mean you can feel the fans and the unit is warm, however it's still ok to put on your lap.

Real battery life-
About 5 hours and 30 minutes with ~3/4 screen brightness, no bluetooth, and internet browsing or pages/word

Speed-
As long as your HDD is not full this laptop is pretty zippy. Personally, my hard drive has just under 40GB left, and the laptops speed is almost identical to the day I bought it.

ALTHOUGH-
If you're planning on buying a 15" and doing any gaming,
DO NOT BUY THIS MODEL.
You might as well get one with dedicated graphics. Especially when planning on doing ANY gaming. You do not want your laptop to turn into a griddle that you could cook an egg on xD

 

[davidlv]

How is the previous generation MBP, specifically the 2.55 version with the NVIDIA 9400 card only when it comes to:
- Heat
- Real life battery time
- speed
Thanks

If you do not need the speed of the improved graphics system in the new models, or the moderate CPU increase, the mid-2009 models are all solid good computers - I get a lot of work done on mine.
The heat varys widely with the ambient temp. You can't compare the 15" to the 13" model, the smaller case makes a big difference in cooling capability, that's why the new 13" models didn't get the i5, and Apple's SMC fan control settings are very biased to the low side to keep the machine quiet, the fans literally never go above the defalut of 2000 rpm unless the temperature skyrockets. Using smcfancontrol and setting up slightly higher defaults, 2500 for normal use in summer, 3000 while charging, 3500 while doing heavier processing etc. will keep the machine much cooler and still quiet.
Battery life depends heavily on usage, screen brightness and bluetooth etc. I use a Magic Mouse and keep the screen fairly bright and still get 7 hours or so, after almost a year of use. It is really a good battery system.
Speed - unless you are doing video encoding, or heavy numerical cruching, it is fine. If you do work in the video world, get an i7 with 8GB of RAM and a good SSD drive, plus lots of external storage!
The C2D CPU is a good choice for the average computer user, it really depends on what you will be doing with your machine. In most cases

 

[nph]

Thanks, so you are saying the 15" gets a lot cooler than the 13" with the same 2.4 C2D processor due to the larger case. Or did I misunderstand you?

 

[davidlv]

Thanks, so you are saying the 15" gets a lot cooler than the 13" with the same 2.4 C2D processor due to the larger case. Or did I misunderstand you?

I have never owned a 13", so I can't say definitely, but the case size does make a big difference in terms of cooling capability. My MBP only has one fan, the faster models with the 9600M graphics (discrete) have 2, but it stays very cool, with a little help from smcfancontrol. So I think Apple has done a good job in the design of the 15". If you need the portability and go with the 13" get the latest model, 2010, the graphics card is much better, but with a 15" the 2009 model is fast enough for 90% or more of what people do with a computer. Only video encoding and CPU intensive tasks will require the power of the i5 or i7, otherwise the only other factor is resale value if you plan on selling the machine down the line. (Status symbol addicts aside)