MBP 17 (AG, 3.06 Ghz, 4Gb, 7200 RPM 500 Gb HDD) On-going Review!

[Onay]

It's a great machine

I ordered mine the day they released the updated spec 17 inch MBP. Here's my take...

- I can't stand glossy, so I ordered the matte anti-glare option. Probably the best decision seeing as the display is the most beautiful part of the computer. Has a high viewing angle (though not 178 degrees like my brother's lenovo t61p). I noticed in the store the glossy has a viewing angle of about 30-40 degrees in either direction (just an estimate) whereas the anti-glare has about a 75 degree viewing angle in either direction. I HIGHLY recommend this option.

- The hardware is working great. One thing I noticed about kicking it into high performance (turning on the 9600gt) is that it gets noticably hotter. I installed the iStat Pro widgit to give me an idea of the temps. The CPU doesn't run much hotter than 70 or 75 degrees C (about 160-170 degrees F) and the GPU doesn't run much hotter than 60 degrees C (around 140 degrees F). These are all safe temps... Core 2 Duo's are designed to run around 90 degrees C safely so I'm not too worried. If you're like me though and leave your MBP running on AC when youre at home, I'd recommend SMCFanControl so you can turn up the fans while gaming or doing graphics intensive things.

- The battery life is phenomenal. I get about 8 hours playing music and surfing the web (basic things) on a middle brightness setting. With the GPU on and doing more intensive things (video ripping, burning, gaming) I get between 6 and 4 hours of battery (still pretty good considering what it's being used for).

- The little rubber feet on the bottom are a nice touch (much improved over the Santa Rosa version)

- I left my MBP running overnight while downloading a large file just to test out it's ability as a "Desktop Replacement". When I turned the screen back on, the CPU was running at 43 degrees C. Very safe and everything was running perfectly.


A few things I didn't like

- I don't see a huge difference between high performance and better battery life settings (GPU on / off). The core animations are about the same and basic usage isn't affected. Only difference I see is with gaming and that's about it (although this may change with OpenCL in Snow Leopard).

- When running Windows in Boot Camp (have tried both XP and 7 RC) the computer gets incredibly hot - not at unsafe temperatures, but around the max temp it runs OS X at but during normal usage.

- The darn aluminum casing seems to get scratched, not badly, but little bits of wear and tear on it (mostly the outside/bottom).



Bottom line - reliable notebook, excellent performance, updated specs are very nice (500gb 7200rpm HD is more than enough space for my media + Boot Camp partition), anti-glare screen is great for all lighting situations.

 

[adamjackson]

I just received the exact same machine yesterday. Same problems.

1. Click hard drive (the fix on these forums didn't work)
2. creaky underbelly which I noticed at the apple store as well. my 15" didn't have that problem.

It barely fits in my computer bag. I had a 2.93 15" before but the resolution of the monitor is epic!

 

[eVolcre]

I'm in the process of setting up my brand new 17" as well. I still have the old one (Gen1 2.16 17") right next to it and it's a night and day difference. I've been resisting getting rid of the old one. The all silver look is something I prefer.

Compared to the new one though my machine looks like a vintage. Nice, but time to let go.

The unibody seems so much more solid. The looks are modern and streamlined. It feels lighter than the original and is definitely thinner. I'm going to miss my classic but I think I can get used to this powerful unibody very very quickly.

More later. My apologies NovemberWhiskey for piling on to your thread. Figured it's a similar topic.

I'm not one to post unboxing pics etc but if anyone is interested in a visual or descriptive comparison of the May 2006 vs June 2009 17" MBP's, let me know what I can do for you ...

eV

PS. Ah, what the heck, here's one pic. I can't resist

 

[NovemberWhiskey]

I'm in the process of setting up my brand new 17" as well. I still have the old one (Gen1 2.16 17") right next to it and it's a night and day difference. I've been resisting getting rid of the old one. The all silver look is something I prefer.

Compared to the new one though my machine looks like a vintage. Nice, but time to let go.

The unibody seems so much more solid. The looks are modern and streamlined. It feels lighter than the original and is definitely thinner. I'm going to miss my classic but I think I can get used to this powerful unibody very very quickly.

More later. My apologies NovemberWhiskey for piling on to your thread. Figured it's a similar topic.

I'm not one to post unboxing pics etc but if anyone is interested in a visual or descriptive comparison of the May 2006 vs June 2009 17" MBP's, let me know what I can do for you ...

eV

PS. Ah, what the heck, here's one pic. I can't resist

No need to apoogize at all!

You are welcome to post anything you like here! Please share your experiences thus far.

 

[eVolcre]

1st post from B&B

I'm naming my new machine "Beautiful Beast"

Whew. I'm usually quite cynical and jaded when it comes to new toys but this one literally took my breath away. The welcome video was my first taste of the screen. Unbelievable compared to the old one. The old MBP just had a new LCD screen put in and yet, when compared to the new machine side by side it looks faded, washed out and the whites look yellow.

The screen, when opened, looks slightly bigger in physical size than the original. Not sure if the dimensions changed. I also just realized the optical drive wasn't on the front anymore. Makes it even more streamlined.

The screen real estate is what's blowing me away. I've had a 17" for the last 3 years and my desktop has never been cramped. Looking at the old machine now and I wonder how I ever got by with such a 'low resolution'.

I'm very pleased with my decision to get the 17" instead of the 13. Yes, expose and spaces helps but I am LOVING the amount of stuff I can fit on one screen! This machine just has a *wow* factor going for it.

The picture has the same 3 programs open on both machines. I adjusted the windows on Safari to the same width, a little bit wider than the edge of the page. Address Book and iCal are adjusted to the minimum size. You can see what's visible on the old and the new.

Battery life. 5 hours "time remaining". Man! I've never seen that on a laptop. It's mind boggling. It took 27 minutes to turn green from the factory settings when I plugged it in. Right now I have it set at full brightness, wifi on, full keyboard backlighting and bluetooth off. It adjusted down to 5:10 remaining. I've also taken off the screen dim option for now.

Started off with 6:30 so I didn't see the mythical 8 hour remaining number. Maybe later. I'm going to use it at these setting while I reinstall software etc and see how long it really lasts.

No logic board whine when plugged in or not. That would drive me crazy!

The keyboard seems to be softer than the ones I tried in the store. Might take me some time to get used to this. I LOVE the old style keyboard on the classics. I've never been a fan of the clickable trackpad. It's too loud, requires too much pressure and the top of it doesn't click anyway, only the middle and bottom. Doesn't bother me much. I always set up tap to click and double click. Can't really remember the last time I even clicked the button on my old machine.

I'm in love ....

eV

 

[eVolcre]

This isn't really an official, well written 'review'. Just my thoughts as I set it up. The main thing is that I might be one of the few people here with a 2006 17" and a 2009 unibody 17" side by side to post a direct comparison. If anyone has any tests or wants my opinion on the classic vs unibody, ask away ...

It's been on battery non stop for 2:40 now and still shows 1:29. I'm getting a little bored of timing the battery, compared to every computer I used it's never ending ... In that 2:40 I've reinstalled OSX twice, full brightness, wifi on, and some research browsing between installs. Pretty amazing!

One disappointment ... the screen brightness. Not sure why but it doesn't seem as blinding as it should be. It's acceptable but I wouldn't be able to use it at less than 1 or 2 below highest. The MBA I saw 3 months ago HAD to be turned down. It actually hurt my eyes.

The bottom is VERY cool compared to my classic. After 3 hours on battery doing the tasks described above it's still cool to the touch and the portion between the screen and the keyboard is just warm. The old machine is unusable after an hour or so of usage. The bottom is too hot to be placed in your lap and the area below the screen can actually burn you.



eV

 

[NovemberWhiskey]

OK, so I have been playing around with bootcamp and VMware fusion for the past two days or so...

Bootcamp installed flawlessly the first time around. The only bump in the road was that you had to select "format" for the partition during the windows installation process because apparently windows wants a NTFS format whereas bootcamp did not do that.

After that, I was without sound, aero, and touchpad functions. After installing the drivers from the OSX installation CD, I got sound, and several (but not all) touchpad features [I got tap-to-click & two-finger scrolling *only vertical; no horizontal*] I really miss the three-finger swipe for navigation.

To get aero, I had to go to the Nvidia site to download their drivers. After I installed it the first time, my bootcamp partition slowed down to a crawl. It was lightening fast before that. It was as slow as it is in VMware.

I thought it was the Nvidia drivers causing the problem, but for whatever reason after a day or so of just using OSX, Win7 works very very well again--even with aero turned on. It is running as fast--or faster--than it is on my Dell Studio XPS, as far as I can tell. No problems whatsoever.

I think some windows updates may have solved the slow-problem, but I can't really be sure. I am just happy that it is working flawlessly now. I can't think of anything wrong with it.

 

[NovemberWhiskey]

Here is a tip:

If you are dissatisfied with your screen, go to system preferences>Universal Access>Contrast

You wouldn't think to edit the contrast of your screen there, but that is precisely where you have to go.

For whatever reason, the contrast was turned up to about 1/3 of the way from the factory. It was distorting images, and I thought it was weird that everything looked a little blurry.

I turned the contrast down a bit, but not at zero, and the images are much sharper.

I am much happier with the screen now.

This also allows me to turn the backlight down a little bit, thus saving some battery life. I don't know why, but with the contrast up I found myself needing the backlight to be near max to read comfortably. I am now at half-brightness and I am able to read comfortably.

 

[eVolcre]

Here is a tip:

If you are dissatisfied with your screen, go to system preferences>Universal Access>Contrast

You wouldn't think to edit the contrast of your screen there, but that is precisely where you have to go.

For whatever reason, the contrast was turned up to about 1/3 of the way from the factory. It was distorting images, and I thought it was weird that everything looked a little blurry.

I turned the contrast down a bit, but not at zero, and the images are much sharper.

I am much happier with the screen now.

This also allows me to turn the backlight down a little bit, thus saving some battery life. I don't know why, but with the contrast up I found myself needing the backlight to be near max to read comfortably. I am now at half-brightness and I am able to read comfortably.

My contrast was at 0. What did you set yours on? I"m still playing with the screen. I could just be OCDing about it and finding problems because of reading threads. The brightness is lower than the ones I remember in the store and so are the black levels. Not truly black. Maybe increasing the contrast will help.

I did reinstall the OS. Read somewhere that brightness increases by doing it. DIdn't really see any effect.

 

[Cavanboy18]

Heres a Real Review.

-The 1920x1200 Glossy is to die for! things look so nice in HD i have a external hard drive and have been torrenting HD Movies recently to watch on my *true* HD screen 1080p. the only thing i might add is that i would view in 9600gt not the 9400 due to some tearing. *i know i should pay for this stuff but with no blueray drive.... its kinda hard?*

-the glass trackpad and the gestures make using this laptop feel like how a real laptop should feel? i love how easy it is to navigate from the track pad without moving the mouse and clicking little minimize buttons and what not. makes laptop computing efficient in my opinion! its hard to explain but i hate using any other laptop with a regular pooty touchpad. this touch pad was so innovative!

-The unibody is by far sleek and very sexy nothing on the market can compare to the quality and craftsmanship of this next-gen case.

-The option of 2 Graphics cards. on the go i use the 9400gs it really isnt that bad of a card either! but i can see significant gains in power compared between the 2. in one instance Warcraft 3:The frozen throne gets 50-60fps on the 9400 maxed out in 1920x1200 resolution but the 9600 gets 180+fps. triple increase in performance. but heres the thing the human eye cant see over 60fps so??? but it just runs smoother i guess.

-the Light up keyboard is nice! it also looks beautiful at night with the stary look you get with the light coming out of the keyboard.

-I must recommend getting an Iphone 3g or higher. Tethering your internet to your laptop is so nice! fast speeds i have dled at 500kbs a second and games quite nicely on Warcraft 3:The Frozen Throne and World of Warcraft! i would not recommend playing a FPS though cus of the slight Delay.

-when at home i set it up on my 52" plasma and view HD content! no lag but you have to re-optimize the color contrast to for the tv. so i made two
profiles.

-Dead silent if your just using your computer for casual stuff like now or viewing movies or something there is pretty much no noise coming from the laptop fans. i can hear some one breathing over the fans of the laptop.

-Battery Life: The batter life ranges. i have yet to get this optimal 8 hours, but! i have gotten like 5-6 hours which is nice for a laptop and no other laptop on the market with he same specs gets this. again it depends on what features you have running and for how long.

-over all a very amazing piece of Technology. only thing i could recommend to improve this badboy is to have Blueray drive. but i have talked to some tech industry guys who say dont expect that and infact blueray will die in years. everything is going Digital. Some consumers like the hard copy in hand i dont so i dont mind i just hope internet gets faster so i can download hd content that range from 4-12gigs a video depending on compression would jump from 1-2megs a sec currently with my broadband connection to like 7-10mb/s

 

[Onay]

-when at home i set it up on my 52" plasma and view HD content! no lag but you have to re-optimize the color contrast to for the tv. so i made two
profiles.

How did you set it up? I just ordered the MonoPrice Mini DisplayPort to HDMI adapter and when it gets here I'm going to test it out on my 60" Sony SXRD. Only caveat is the lack of sound output from it as I've read in the reviews :/

 

[airplaneman]

Are you sure it is not the fan?

Yeah, mine is really quiet and I cannot hear it when I am just sitting here typing. I have to put my ear 1-inch away from that area to hear anything. Even then, it may not be the same thing you are describing. But there is a faint high-pitched noise.

Anyways, I just unplugged to see what kind of battery life I am getting.

I have been unplugged for 29 minutes now, and I am 3 bars below max brightness.

6:27 is the current readout.

The readout jumps all over the place. I was down at 2:50 min at one point, and when I turned the brightness all the way down, I get 8:50.

Just jumped to 6:35. I just have FFx open, two tabs, and nothing else going on besides posting this.

Is there a better way to view batter life? Some users were talking about how it shows the health of the battery (cycles, etc.) Where to I find that?

I think it's called Coconut Battery.

 

[NovemberWhiskey]

Ok, after adjusting my contrast setting and being able to use my laptop at half-brightness, I am getting a battery read-out from 7:09-9:45.

Just typing this message, I am getting an 8:41 reading now.

 

[NovemberWhiskey]

My contrast was at 0. What did you set yours on? I"m still playing with the screen. I could just be OCDing about it and finding problems because of reading threads. The brightness is lower than the ones I remember in the store and so are the black levels. Not truly black. Maybe increasing the contrast will help.

I did reinstall the OS. Read somewhere that brightness increases by doing it. DIdn't really see any effect.

I set my contrast to 0. It was really high from the factory...I don't know why. Maybe because I have an AG screen.

I think it's called Coconut Battery.

Thanks!

 

[eVolcre]

I've got a battery health of 95% with 3 cycles on it. Is this normal? I thought it would be close to 100% since the thing is brand new

eV

 

[NovemberWhiskey]

I've got a battery health of 95% with 3 cycles on it. Is this normal? I thought it would be close to 100% since the thing is brand new

eV

I had 97% after my first charge/drain cycle. It showed I went through 3 charge cycles.

I dl coconut battery, and it shows a 4 week old health with 97% health.

I suppose it could be due to testing at the factory? I don't think it is a big deal either way, but just curious if anybody has 100% from the factory.

 

[midgetsanchez]

I had 97% after my first charge/drain cycle. It showed I went through 3 charge cycles.

I dl coconut battery, and it shows a 4 week old health with 97% health.

I suppose it could be due to testing at the factory? I don't think it is a big deal either way, but just curious if anybody has 100% from the factory.

Did yours start at 100% and then drop to 97%? If so I'd begin to worry and start keeping an eye on that health to see if it drops after more cycles. If so, you may have a faulty battery.

My new 17" has had 10 cycles and still shows 100% health. Mine shows 4 weeks old as well.

 

[eVolcre]

Did yours start at 100% and then drop to 97%? If so I'd begin to worry and start keeping an eye on that health to see if it drops after more cycles. If so, you may have a faulty battery.

My new 17" has had 10 cycles and still shows 100% health. Mine shows 4 weeks old as well.

Great! Another thing to obsess about.

No dead pixels though so that's a good thing and the drive is nice and quiet. I'll run the battery down a bit to see if the health decreases with more cycles ..

eV

 

[Ruahrc]

Why does everyone ask for pics? Its exactly the same as the pics on apple.com or all of the other people who posted pics on here. Most people take the pics w/ their camera phone and they suck anyway. Unless you want it to prove op actually has a mbp 17. In that case, it is a sad sad day for OP if he or she is making this up just to get feedback and comments.

Oh that day has come and gone already (not for the OP though). Don't forget this is Macrumors you're talking about here!!!

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/718335/

Ruahrc

P.S. totally agree about the pictures. Do people not know what focus is? Or that holding their cell phone camera 1cm from their subject will not result in a clear picture?

 

[NovemberWhiskey]

Did yours start at 100% and then drop to 97%? If so I'd begin to worry and start keeping an eye on that health to see if it drops after more cycles. If so, you may have a faulty battery.

My new 17" has had 10 cycles and still shows 100% health. Mine shows 4 weeks old as well.

Nope. I never saw 100%. First time that I checked, it was at 97% and 3 charge cycels--even though I only charged it once.

Do your MBPs run hot to the touch? I found that sometimes it is cool, and sometimes it is burning hot. I am not sure what triggers the heat yet.

It is definitely always hot in bootcamp. but it is even hot sometimes in OSX. Maybe it has to do with which graphics card is selected.

 

[eVolcre]

Did yours start at 100% and then drop to 97%? If so I'd begin to worry and start keeping an eye on that health to see if it drops after more cycles. If so, you may have a faulty battery.

My new 17" has had 10 cycles and still shows 100% health. Mine shows 4 weeks old as well.

Update ...

I did a calibration last night and battery health is now at 97% with 4 cycles. Bizarre. Dropped from 98% when I set it up down to 95% and now back up to 97%. I'll keep an eye on it though.

Speaking of calibration, I love the new battery life but it takes an effort to run down the battery

eV

 

[NovemberWhiskey]

The more I play with the computer, the more I love it.

The features of Leopard are just amazing. The multi-touch trackpad is probably the best thing to ever happen to a laptop. You can finally have functionality with a mouse. In fact, I don't even use the mouse anymore even when I am at home and have it right there in front of me. The touchpad is just that efficient. You guys really need to try multi-clutch. It is really amazing. I set up a three-finger swipe up to get a new tab in ffx, and it just increases productivity like crazy.

Playing with spaces really makes you appreciate the thought they put into this operating system. I mean, you basically get 4 desktops in one, and you can easily switch between them with a few swipes or clicks. I usually set one for my VMware Fusion window running Windows 7, one for a movie/play, and one for browsing/chat. It's really brilliant.

I have found nearly every app to be better than its windows equivalent. Even the DVD player interface is better imo. It's brilliant the way they set up the chapters at the top, and how the chapters you have watched at illuminated while the remaining ones are dimmed. It makes navigation way more easy than the one in windows.

I would say it takes a little time if you are switching from windows, but once it hits it really hits you hard. Plus its nice to be able to go all night long without recharging--and the battery is pretty nice too.

 

[sam10685]

I find it amazing how people that baby their machines right out of the box always seem to experience so kind of issue while people that treat their machine like an ordinary computer rarely ever have problems.

 

[NovemberWhiskey]

I find it amazing how people that baby their machines right out of the box always seem to experience so kind of issue while people that treat their machine like an ordinary computer rarely ever have problems.

lol. nice try...

 

[eVolcre]

Heres a Real Review.

-The 1920x1200 Glossy is to die for! things look so nice in HD i have a external hard drive and have been torrenting HD Movies recently to watch on my *true* HD screen 1080p. the only thing i might add is that i would view in 9600gt not the 9400 due to some tearing. *i know i should pay for this stuff but with no blueray drive.... its kinda hard?*

-the glass trackpad and the gestures make using this laptop feel like how a real laptop should feel? i love how easy it is to navigate from the track pad without moving the mouse and clicking little minimize buttons and what not. makes laptop computing efficient in my opinion! its hard to explain but i hate using any other laptop with a regular pooty touchpad. this touch pad was so innovative!

-The unibody is by far sleek and very sexy nothing on the market can compare to the quality and craftsmanship of this next-gen case.

-The option of 2 Graphics cards. on the go i use the 9400gs it really isnt that bad of a card either! but i can see significant gains in power compared between the 2. in one instance Warcraft 3:The frozen throne gets 50-60fps on the 9400 maxed out in 1920x1200 resolution but the 9600 gets 180+fps. triple increase in performance. but heres the thing the human eye cant see over 60fps so??? but it just runs smoother i guess.

-the Light up keyboard is nice! it also looks beautiful at night with the stary look you get with the light coming out of the keyboard.

-I must recommend getting an Iphone 3g or higher. Tethering your internet to your laptop is so nice! fast speeds i have dled at 500kbs a second and games quite nicely on Warcraft 3:The Frozen Throne and World of Warcraft! i would not recommend playing a FPS though cus of the slight Delay.

-when at home i set it up on my 52" plasma and view HD content! no lag but you have to re-optimize the color contrast to for the tv. so i made two
profiles.

-Dead silent if your just using your computer for casual stuff like now or viewing movies or something there is pretty much no noise coming from the laptop fans. i can hear some one breathing over the fans of the laptop.

-Battery Life: The batter life ranges. i have yet to get this optimal 8 hours, but! i have gotten like 5-6 hours which is nice for a laptop and no other laptop on the market with he same specs gets this. again it depends on what features you have running and for how long.

-over all a very amazing piece of Technology. only thing i could recommend to improve this badboy is to have Blueray drive. but i have talked to some tech industry guys who say dont expect that and infact blueray will die in years. everything is going Digital. Some consumers like the hard copy in hand i dont so i dont mind i just hope internet gets faster so i can download hd content that range from 4-12gigs a video depending on compression would jump from 1-2megs a sec currently with my broadband connection to like 7-10mb/s

The fan noise is starting to annoy me. In a quiet room with light usage I can hear the fans and its distracting. Please don't compare it to a 17" Dell etc. I'm used to dead silence from my old 17".

In fact, I still have the old one and powered it up to see if I could hear a difference. The fans on the unibody have a higher pitched sound. I checked fan speeds and both the fans in the 1st Gen run between 998 and 1002. With the same usage the unibodies fans are between 1975 and 2075.

Why the increase in revs? May seem like a small thing but its really make or break for me. I cannot stand noise, especially in a quiet room.

I'm also hearing a high pitched whine (granted its when my ear is 3 inches away). Wondering if its also the fan or that dreaded logic board whine the Y1 MBPs used to have!

eV