Seriously!!
- HP Envy = blazing fast quad core CPU if you want it
- The GPU is significantly quicker and the gap widens as you overclock it
- Native windows gaming beats bootcamp any day
- Apache is trivial to install on windows
- 16GB ram support anyone?
The MBP is a wonderful laptop that has very deliberately selected hardware for a blend of performance and battery life.
It does not compare to the HP Envy in the performance department at all. period!
I have a penryn MBP 15 and went and bought a brand MBP 13" this morning for travel etc. so am definitely a Mac fan.
But for pure performance the Envy's are in another league entirely!!
I will most likely get the 17 when they are released (assuming specs are good!) and put my much loved/abused MBP15 to pasture...
Z
Where are your benchmarks? Notebookcheck.net has the specs I used. Again, only a 15.5% gain from the ATI 5830 over the NVIDIA 330M GT, in terms of 3DMark 06. That is not bad, but I wouldn't call it "another league." I mean, I don't know how much HP is paying you but 15.5% is not "another league."
Also, LOL, the quad-core chip you are raving about is 1.6 GHZ! I crap out 1.6 GHZ chips in my sleep. Sigh. Look dude this 2.66 GHz i7 that's in the MacBook Pro simply *is not available* on the HP... the best they have is the 2.53 GHz i5, which is good, but it's not quite as fast. Now, this 2.66 GHz i7 outperforms or matches my *Mac Pro* with its EIGHT CORES of 2.16 GHz on almost every task I have thrown at it. Only on things that use more than the four virtual cores of the CPU do you notice any difference (video compression, etc.).
Can you name me even ONE game that uses more than FOUR cores simultaneously? Perhaps some of the very latest games actually do? I am curious to know. Anyway, I'm quite sure that on most games (given that 99% of them don't use more than two cores), then you're going to get much better performance on an i7 dual core at 2.66 GHz, than you are on an i7 quad core with 1.6 GHz.
When I bought my MacBook Pro, it was *$70 cheaper* than an equivalently specced HP. Even my 8600M GT machine ran games very well, I got over 30FPS on Oblivion which was better than my XBOX 360 was getting. Besides, if you're THAT hardcore of a gamer, and you just *insist* on using a laptop for it, then why aren't you purchasing an Alienware with dual SLI and all that stuff? Seriously.
Personally, I think you're just wrong. I'll take the Mac's faster CPU, internal DVD writer, and 2x battery life plus the $70 I saved (though I see HP has dropped its prices since Apple's release, big surprise) over a marginally faster GPU any day! Oh yeah and the build quality of the MacBook Pro is second-to-none. HP's about 3 years behind Apple on this. Where is the unibody, HP?