[Script from the video]
The first thing I like the the overall design, build quality, and sturdiness of the computer. The whole computer feels very sturdy when you hold it in your hands.
The second thing I like is the LED Backlight Widescreen Display. The displays native resolution is 1280x800 and looks very nice. The colors are extremely vivid and text and images are crisp and clear. However, since the display is glass, it is extremely prone to reflecting just about everything. Especially if you work in high light environments or next to windows. Some people don’t like these glossy displays, but I prefer them to matte displays because of the clearer and more vivid picture.
I also like the huge multi-touch trackpad. At first, I thought the multi-touch gestures wouldn’t be that useful. But after being able to play with it, I found that it’s actually pretty cool to use. It’s more efficient to use the gestures via having to click the “Rotate and Next Image” Buttons every time you want to rotate or move to the next image.
The built in iSight Camera and Mic are also great features. This makes it a lot easier to record video and audio without always needing to plug in a mic and video camera.
The new SD card slot is a great addition for me because all the video I record with my camera is put into a SD Card. So all I have to do is put in the SD Card and transfer the media to my desktop. The only possible downside to this feature is that the card sticks out about 1/2 in from the side of the computer.
Since I tend to work in low-light environments, one feature I really wanted in my new laptop was a backlit keyboard. It really comes in handy a lot and allows me to work without having to bend the screen downward so I can see the keys.
The sound quality of this machine is on par with a lot of the other computers I have seen and worked with. The sounds are clearer that my last computer, but there isn’t much bass. But again, many laptops don’t have a lot of bass associated with it.
The battery life of this computer is just awesome. Apple advertises that it can achieve a maximum of 7 hours on a single charge. I haven’t gotten that much, but from my tests, it was definitely a very long lasting battery. When I was playing games such as Portal and Team Fortress, I was able to achieve anywhere from a 2.5 - 3.5 hour battery life on all medium settings. I was playing on Windows Vista with the Battery Settings on High Performance and Bluetooth turned off. Normal Browsing on OSX gave me around 5.5 - 6 hours, and normal usage gave me around 4 - 4.5 hours. Normal usage includes playing iTunes music, browsing YouTube, editing videos, and having Skype open.
The final I’ll talk about is the ability for Macs to run Windows. I installed Windows Vista: Home Premium via Boot Camp with no problems at all. The only problem I had was when Vista was installing updates and the power went off in the house. It corrupted the boot up file, but that was easily fixed and I haven’t had any problems at all with it.
Once I installed all my games on the Windows side, I took the “Windows Experience Index” test which basically is a benchmark that tells you how well Vista will perform. My MacBook Pro overall scored a 5.1 with the processor scoring a 5.2, RAM scored a 5.9, Graphics scored a 5.1, Gaming Graphics scored a 5.2, and the HDD scored a 5.5. All of which are pretty impressive, especially in the graphics and RAM tests. I will be going over the gaming performance in another video, but for now, I’ll talk about the things I don’t quite like about the MacBook Pro.
I don’t like how the computer only has 2 USB ports. I have way more than 2 USB devices and switching all of them out to plug other things in can be pretty annoying. But you can never have enough USB ports so I’ll just buy a powered USB hub.
It was interesting to me that Apple decided to combine the audio in and audio out ports into one port. I know they did this because the were running out of space on the I/O port side. This is a downside to me because I used both ports simultaneously when I would broadcast my High School’s Sports Games. So now, I’ll have to buy a USB microphone.
The last and most frustrating thing to me is the Mac’s inability to connect to my 19” HDTV at its native resolution of 1440x900. The TV is basically brand new and now I can’t use it with my new Mac. So I’m going to sell it so I can afford the 24” Apple Cinema Display. So that was the most frustrating thing.
