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How is your macbook pro holding up?

S

shanshor

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jan 4, 2008
227
82
Has it slowed down at all like most notebooks will? do you find the 15 inch screen sufficient for your needs?

I am looking to buy a macbook pro/imac 24"(my first mac!) i would like portabilitly, but it isnt really necessary. which would you prefer?
 
My macbook pro is as fast as when I got it. No slowing down. Still, mine is only 3-4 weeks old or something. So I wouldn't know. I love my macbook pro and I'm glad I didn't buy the 17" because even the 15" is plenty heavy to carry. Mind you, my 15" is lighter that my dad's 13" fujitsu laptop. :p
 
shanshor said:
Has it slowed down at all like most notebooks will? do you find the 15 inch screen sufficient for your needs?

I am looking to buy a macbook pro/imac 24"(my first mac!) i would like portabilitly, but it isnt really necessary. which would you prefer?
Click to expand...

no slowdown (although I've just owned it for 2 weeks)

screen sufficient? it's alright. I actually find the font a bit small at times. The screen itself is not an issue with spaces.

personally, i use the mbp as a desktop but since I do move around on the weekends, i opted for a laptop instead of the imac
 
Owned my MBP for almost a year now and I LOVE IT. some minor slow down but pretty hard to tell sometimes. NOTHING near the way a PC slows down after a couple of months of use.

Wouldn't trade it for the world. However, upgrading to a new one might be an option. But I am always looking for the latest and greatest. :)

Peace:cool:
 
go with the mbp

I got my first mac almost a year ago and i went with a MacBook pro. I am a graduate student so portability is a must. I can't detect any slow down and it is plenty fast for everything I do, which includes some occasional gaming in bootcamp. I got the 2.2ghz MBP and it plays call of duty 4 just fine. From what I understand the iMacs are similar in speed to the mbp as they use mobile processors and similar graphics cards. The one area where they might have an advantage is in screen size, but the 15" is plenty big for all the day to day things I do. When I play call of duty 4 or do photo editing I often hook it up to a 22" samsung monitor so I have the best of both worlds, plus the screen isn't glossy, but that is a personal preference. I hope you enjoy your new mac as much as I have.
 
I've had my baby for over a year and she's as fast and awesome as the day I got her. Some minor bumps along the way, but nothing major. If you get your mac you will have to concede that it will NOT be perfect, and at first you will fret over very minor things (slight build imperfections etc...) and later you learn that it's no big deal.
 
Just under two years, and it did indeed appear to be slowing down. I suspected this was due to the 160 gb hard drive I put in it being nearly full, and turned out to be right. I dropped in a 320 gb WD scorpio and am back to full-speed again. Unless something actually breaks, it's hard to imagine a compelling reason to upgrade to the newest in the lineup any time soon.
 
Well mine is doing well! routine battery maintenance, run onyx and thats about it.

worth every penny

Cheers
 
shanshor said:
Has it slowed down at all like most notebooks will? do you find the 15 inch screen sufficient for your needs?

I am looking to buy a macbook pro/imac 24"(my first mac!) i would like portabilitly, but it isnt really necessary. which would you prefer?
Click to expand...

If portability is a convenient, once in a while thing rather than a regular state, then why not grab the 17", and combine it with an external monitor?

If I didn't have to carry my laptop with me all the time, and instead just needed a system I can carry with me on rare occasions, that would be my decision.
 
"Has it slowed down at all like most notebooks will?"

Why would a Macbook Pro (or Macbook, iMac) slow down? I understand that the HD needs to be of sufficient size. An archive and clean install after a couple of years is beneficial. Anything else I am missing?
 
The first question that you need to answer is one of portability. If portability is not necessary, then go with the iMac; it is cheaper, has more screen real estate, and more powerful than the MBP. However, if you want portability, then ask this, do you need the MBP. If you want a mix between the both, and you don't need the assets a pro machine provides, get a MB with an external monitor.
As far as slowing down. It probably isn't that it will slow down, unless your HDD fills up, or don't do any maintenance. What you will notice is that new applications and OS's will require a more demanding computer. So is your computer getting slower, no, but the demands are getting higher.
 
My wife and I both have Rev A core duo MBP's, mine is a 2.0, her's is a 1.8.

Mine has been going strong since we bought them when they were released 2 years ago. My wife's however was replaced DOA, then it needed the mainboard replaced, then recently one of the fans failed and had to be replaced, and now just today is making horrible fan tick/grinding noises.

We're going to get her's repaired, AGAIN, and then sell it and get her a Blackbook, she doesn't really use the 'PRO' in Macbook Pro, so she'll be fine with a new MB instead. Just holding out with the rumors of a re-design or update!

I plan to upgrade my Macbook Pro to a new Macbook Pro sometime this year before the 3 years of Applecare runs out.
 
I've had my MBP 15" 1,1 since April 2006. No slow downs to speak of, even after I put on Adobe CS3. No major issues except for the battery recall.

I run it on average 12 hours a day. And I've been told that it shouldn't be used as a desktop system. To which I say, if I wanted something to just check my emails I would have looked for something like an iPhone.
 
for as much as i have on my MBP ( 10mths old) its almost as good as the day i bought it. Really just keep up with the cleaning, and run onyx, get a battery monitor and protect it from slippery hands and you will have a great machine.
 
Cybix said:
My wife and I both have Rev A core duo MBP's, mine is a 2.0, her's is a 1.8.

Mine has been going strong since we bought them when they were released 2 years ago. My wife's however was replaced DOA, then it needed the mainboard replaced, then recently one of the fans failed and had to be replaced, and now just today is making horrible fan tick/grinding noises.

We're going to get her's repaired, AGAIN...
Click to expand...

If you stick with the repairs, I'm willing to bet they either get it fixed, or eventually just replace it for you if you note how many times it's needed to be in for repair. My powerbook had a similar repair history, and when the last repair was taking a long time due to difficulty of finding the parts, they just replaced it with a new MBP. In light of that possibility, I'd stick with the pro rather than go through the hassle of selling it and shelling out more dough for a blackbook.
 
Heres a secret most people dont know:

Ram and harddrives degrade!

I never have laptop slowdown with any machine, heres why:

First, I keep 99% of my files on externals and only installed programs on my harddrives.

Second, after a year and a half I usually swap the ram. Try it, you will usually see a speed increase. Only once did I not notice a speed increase.

Third, after two years I usually replace the harddrive.

Your milage may vary but this works great for me. My computers always run just as fast as the day I got them.
 
Had mine for about 6 months, it's working perfectly. I don't notice any significant slowdowns. This is my first mac and I'm loving it every minute. I still own a 17" Toshiba laptop and I realized how crappy Windows really was :p
I'm now an :apple: fanatic.
 
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