Category: Technology

17-inch MacBook Pro Released

Apple has finally released their 17-inch MacBook Pro today. It looks wild! The major difference, other than the 17-inch screen, is:

  1. (3) USB 2.0 slots as opposed to (2) on the 15.4-inch MacBook.
  2. 800 Firewire slot added.
  3. 8x Dual Layer DVD-Burner versus the 15.4-inch’s 4x Single Layer DVD-Burner.
  4. It comes with the 2.16GHz Dual Core Intel chips as standard.

For those wondering how much this laptop costs, $2799. Ouch. A bit on the pricey side.

I personally think that the 17-inch is too big of a laptop for mobility. Of course in most cases, people who opt for the 17-inch do so for functionality and more so as desktop replacement unit than something for portability and mobility. Our University Photographer and previous University Webmaster both had 17-inch PowerBooks and they are just crazy to see in person. I can definitely see the advantages of having a 17-inch screen, especially when I’m working on webpages, homework, etc. The 15.4-inch is perfect to use daily and it would be nice to have a 19-inch external LCD to plug into when I need more viewing area.

World of Warcraft and MacBook Pro

So my nephew installed World of Warcraft on my MacBook Pro to test how fast WOW would run, and we must say it is definitely phenomenal! Originally on the PowerBook I had, WOW ran quite laggy and the graphics were choppy and unexciting; essentially WOW worked on the PowerBook, it just wasn’t very satisfying to play on it. The MacBook Pro, on the other hand, seemed to be day and night difference, of course to be expected since the video card is better, dual core processor, and so on. I will post up the in-game settings once I get them. I wanted to test WOW on the WinXP partition on the MacBook, but unfortunately I only have 5GB total partitioned for Windows and only have 1.5GB left (WOW requires at least 4GB).

Parallels: WinXP inside Mac OS X

In other news…Parallels has released new beta software that will allow WinXP to run inside the Mac OS. While this may be seen as a copy of VirtualPC, that is not entirely the case because VirtualPC is emulation software, whereas Parallels’ is virtualization software. Virtualization utilizes “Intel’s ‘Virtualization Technology’ ? a feature built into the new Core Duo chipset used by Apple?s current Intel-based offerings ? in order to function.” In other words, it talks to the Intel processor similar to BootCamp which should produce dramatic speed results compared to VirtualPC. I’m tempted to try this out…Read the full story from this link to Macworld.

WinXP on MacBook Benchmarks

In regards to this previous post about WinXP on the MacBook Pro, PC World has conducted a benchmark review in comparison of WinXP running on: a 2.0GHz Duo Core iMac, a 2.16GHz Duo Core MacBook Pro, a Dell Inspiron 2.0GHz Duo Core E1705 laptop, a HP Compaq 2.16GHz Duo Core laptop, and a HP Pavilion 2.0GHz Athlon 64 a1250n Media Center desktop. In most cases such as multitasking, Roxio VideoWave, Adobe Photoshop 7.0.1, and Microsoft Office 2002 SP-2, the MacBook clocked the best times. The categories that the machines were competing in were: WorldBench 5 Score, Multitasking, Windows Media Encoder 9, Roxio VideoWave, Adobe Photoshop 7.0.1, and Microsoft Office 2002 SP-2. The HP Compaq nx9420 has the best WorldBench 5 score with the MacBook Pro coming in second. The complete article can be found here on Macworld’s site.

[Edit: Removed pargraph on Parallels and created new post for it.]

Windows XP on Mac?! Say what?!

It has been speculated for some time, even before the release, the possibility of running Windows XP on the Intel core processor Macs. Some of the Apple people I had spoke with had said this probably wouldn’t be possible because the Mac Intel processors were utilizing EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface) and Win XP depends heavily on EFI (i.e. Bios) and Microsoft even went so far as to say that the next generation OS (Vista) wouldn’t support EFI either. There had been a reported case in which a person had won an award for being able to install Win XP on a Mac Intel machine as reported by ZDNet.

Apple as of today released what they call Boot Camp, a downloadable program that allows Win XP to run on the Mac Intel machines. I would never have guessed that, of all people, Apple would release this. Apparently this software is still in beta and is unsupported, but Leopard (Mac OX 10.5) would have Boot Camp and more functionality of that built in natively. I’m heavily debating whether or not to try it because I only have about ~9GB left of hard drive space (of 80GB) and it calls for at least 10GB (not sure why). Although I spoke to someone who works at Apple and has said that the people in our Book Store has successfully been able to install, configure, and run Win XP on one of their Mac Intel machines as demo. I’m going to check that out when I can.

Got my new work laptop…MacBook Pro!

After being on order since Apple’s announcement of Intel dual core processors in their 15inch laptops, it arrive this morning into shipping. I’m currently in the process of transferring all my data from my current PowerBook G4 to the MacBook Pro. So far my observations on the new MacBook:

  1. It’s a tad bit thinner than the PowerBook (1 inch versus 1.18).
  2. It’s a bit wider, 15.4 inch as opposed to the 15.2 on the PowerBook.
  3. The display is brighter and seems more clearer.
  4. The MacBook’s screen requires a bit more force to open and close compared to the PowerBook. Not entirely sure why that is.
  5. On installation of software such as Adobe CS 2, Apple Remote Desktop, Microsoft Office 2004, etc. doesn’t seem much faster, but that could be because I’m transfering 12gb of document data while installing the software.
  6. The MacBook seems to run a bit warmer than the PowerBook, but that seems to be related reason #5. Once I start doing the same things I did on the PowerBook on the MacBook, we’ll see if it’s still warmer. After using it a bit more (i.e. more file transfering), it turns out that the MacBook is about as warm as the PowerBook. When you try to multitask too much, it gets warmer since more load is placed on the dual processors.
  7. The illuminating keyboard is much brighter. With the lights on the office, I can definitely tell the illuminated keyboard is on.
  8. The built on iSight webcam is very nice. Seems to be as good as the iSight on the new iMacs despite the size difference.
  9. The remote control is cool.
  10. The magnetic quick detach power supply is very cool.
  11. The fact that the new power supply is double the size of the previous power supply plus it’s now 85 wattage is not so cool.
  12. The keyboard doesn’t have the same nice soft, quiet feel that the PowerBook has. It’s starting to feel like a Dell’s keyboard.
  13. There is no modem jack. You have to buy a usb modem if you want/need to dialup.
  14. Instead of having a PCMCIA slot, it has an Express Port.
  15. The RAM is easier to get to.
  16. Apple Remote Desktop (ARD) does not work with the MacBook at this time, even with Rosetta. Refer to Apple’s notes on ARD and the Intel Based Processors. But supposedly ARD 3.0 is supposed to be released anytime according to Apple Insider.
  17. Apparently the optical drive on the MacBook is 4x SuperDrive with no dual-layer burning capabilities as compared to the 8x SuperDrive with dual-layer burning…although the MacBook’s drive is smaller…small comfort. Read more about it here, along with a pretty good in-depth review by MacWorld on the MacBook, .
  18. According to Dane Riley, the MacBook Pro is supposed to have a Windows-like hibernation mode in which if the battery is near critical depletion, it will dump all the RAM data to the hard drive so the next start up will bring power back to existing last state. Interesting.
  19. Apple TechTool Deluxe does not work on the MacBook Pro, not yet anyways.
  20. Any other copies of the Mac OS that does not specifically say MacBook Pro on it will not boot by holding the “C” button down.
  21. Non-Intel processor Macs cannot access, see, etc. an Intel processor Mac placed in target disk mode.
  22. WinXP can be installed on Intel based processors with the use of Apple’s Boot Camp.

The MacBook Pro that I got is configured as such: 1.83GHZ Dual Core Intel Processors, 80GB hard drive, 1GB of RAM, and 128mb video card.