If I buy a 2011 MBP

[thadoggfather]

Can I still load SL on it?

Or have they been refreshed with newer Lion keys printed (Launchpad button and Mission Control button) and to work only with Lion?

Would an Intel 3000 perform comparably at 1920x1200 on a 24" as my 320M from my 2010 13" MBP?

 

[mountains]

Can I still load SL on it?

Or have they been refreshed with newer Lion keys printed (Launchpad button and Mission Control button) and to work only with Lion?

They've been refreshed with Mission Control/Launchpad keys, but I'd be kind of surprised if they couldn't actually run SL if you just clean installed it (although I've definitely been wrong before).

Would an Intel 3000 perform comparably at 1920x1200 on a 24" as my 320M from my 2010 13" MBP?

Comparably, in that neither one of them is likely to run modern games very well at 1920x1200. The 320M is a bit better, though, because it has the edge when it comes to things like shader support.

 

[BLOCKMONSTER]

You would need the actual gray restore discs that came with your specific MBP (ex 15" comes with its own, 13" comes with its own, etc). Mine came with just Lion and I end up buying 1 from eBay brand new. But after all that, i ended with a clean install of Lion so I don't know why I went thru all that to be back where I started. At least I learned a lil more about my MBP.

 

[i4k20c]

Someone was telling me it wouldn't work. I too was deeply surprised by this, but have never tested it.

Obviously Thunderbolt wouldn't work and you could get some program to reassign keys i'm sure.

But i too was kind of as to why the OS wouldn't install, say if you had a Leopard DVD and Snow Leopard DVD.

 

[killerrobot]

From what I've been told, you can never downgrade below what the system was shipped with. So if it ships with Lion pre-installed, there's no way to downgrade to SL.

So it would have to come with SL installed (probably still a good chance of that) in order to use SL.

 

[henry72]

From what I've been told, you can never downgrade below what the system was shipped with. So if it ships with Lion pre-installed, there's no way to downgrade to SL.

So it would have to come with SL installed (probably still a good chance of that) in order to use SL.

No I don't agree. Since the machine was shipped with SL early this year. The new MacBook Pro ships with Lion is just an OS update, no hardware changes. Unless they locked from the firmware.

It cannot downgrade when it's a new hardware with Lion like the new Mac Mini and Air. I think is to do with the drivers.

 

[medi.freak]

I bought my 2011 macbook pro fairly early, so it still shipped with SL, but I got the free upgrade to Lion. Does that mean that if I wanted to I could downgrade again (since I do have the CD still that came with the laptop) and the OP can not? Strange...since the laptops are not different are they? I would say it would work...maybe I am wrong.

 

[RayK]

You cab downgrade to sl you would just have to get a sl disc.

 

[Young Spade]

I bought my 2011 macbook pro fairly early, so it still shipped with SL, but I got the free upgrade to Lion. Does that mean that if I wanted to I could downgrade again (since I do have the CD still that came with the laptop) and the OP can not? Strange...since the laptops are not different are they? I would say it would work...maybe I am wrong.

If you have the disk, you can downgrade.

If the MBP does NOT come with the disk... ?

For the MBA, if it came WITH lion, you CANNOT go back to SL.

I think this is the same for the MBPs, but I am not sure. There's a reason why the MBAs can't go down; it's easy to assume that it's the same case for the MBP. (the reasoning)

 

[Nychot]

I had the genius bar replace lion with SL bevause my office 2004 Wont run under lion. No problem. It took 20 minutes and they didnt even use my disks that i brought to the apple store. For some mysterious reason apple tevh support on the phone claims it cant be downgraded.

Can I still load SL on it?

Or have they been refreshed with newer Lion keys printed (Launchpad button and Mission Control button) and to work only with Lion?

Would an Intel 3000 perform comparably at 1920x1200 on a 24" as my 320M from my 2010 13" MBP?

 

[Lennyvalentin]

Or have they been refreshed with newer Lion keys printed (Launchpad button and Mission Control button) and to work only with Lion?

Only the graphic printed on the key changed, the actual hardware and its functionality is obviously left untouched or else those keys wouldn't work for snow kitty upgraders. So going back from lion will thusly also work.

Would an Intel 3000 perform comparably at 1920x1200 on a 24" as my 320M from my 2010 13" MBP?

Under Macos: roughly yes. Some say even a slight advantage for the Intel 3000, maybe because the sandy bridge CPU is such a huge upgrade compared to the core2 duo in the older 13".

Under windows, the Intel 3000 driver used to be poorly optimized and thus noticeably slower in games than the older Nvidia GPU. Intel recently released a driver update however so maybe the difference is less pronounced now, I haven't seen anyone do any benchmarks so who knows. Intel has always been notoriously bad at writing software for its own processors (other than its compiler) so I wouldn't have any big hopes...

Obviously Thunderbolt wouldn't work

Thunderbolt works with snow kitty.