Thursday, April 22, 2010

MacBook Pro 6.2


As a continuation of the previous Infrastructure post, I received my new MB Pro 6.2 today and got it up and running and even spent most of the evening with it today...

It's weird because it feels just like my old MacBook 5.1 LOL :)

What I mean is, I have everything setup just like my old MB with the external monitor (Eizo) so it uses the same display. In addition, I just migrated all my settings and files over (and then reinstalled the apps because I didn't want all of them), so it's a virtual carbon copy of the old MB.

Until I look at the MacBook Pro 6.2 display itself. The dot pitch of the new display is a lot finer than the Eizo. The Eizo is 24" and provides up to 1920x1200. The new MBP is a 15.4" matte LCD that provides up to 1680x1050. The difference in diagonal length is 8.6 inches but only 240x150 difference which is still a 23% difference in pixels compared to a 56% increase in length. I'm still not used to seeing the smaller font and part of me wishes the words were bigger. I might be getting old.

Not to keep harping on the screen but the matte screen is a nice change of pace compared to the old glossy screen. Sure I don't have the nice black bezel around the display anymore but I actually kind of like the uniqueness of the silver matte screen. The MacBook Pro lettering is now black on the silver bezel.

I've finally got a FireWire 800 port which means my Drobo will be transferring data at 2x the speeds of USB2.0 which was how my old MB was connecting to the Drobo.

And now that I've got a "Pro" I can finally boot in the 64-bit kernel. Not that important until you feel the difference in speed of PS CS4 and Lr2. Yup, the speed was noticeable. I'm already seeing a drastic increase in speed because the processor is the 2.66GHz i7 utilizing native quad-core architecture with more L3 cache (4MB vs. 3MB L2 in the old MB). Boot times are pretty quick. Running a blur via PS provided a nice boost in speed and decrease in time spent twiddling my thumbs. I'll need to spend some more time in the 64-bit world and compare it to the 32-bit version of the same app in this computer otherwise, I might falsely attribute the speed increase to the kernel instead of the hardware.

Not everything is gravy though. PS in the 32-bit kernel wasn't as graphically smooth as I thought it should have been. I have yet to test it in the 64-bit mode. Furthermore the SSD will eventually slow down as I have to erase parts of the drive to write new data.

Is it the "savior" that I need? I don't know yet. As far as money saved, that it surely wasn't. 8GB RAM still doesn't quite feel like enough as I wish I could put 12GB in there. I mean with Lr and PS and Safari you can use up 8GB in a heartbeat and then need virtual memory faster than I can say "upgrade?"

I need a few more days to test out the system. To be honest with you, I didn't think that I'd have much of an update on the new machine at all considering that I just got it today. But the Migration Tool/Assistant was invaluable in the move from the old MB to the new MBP and things went without a hitch... honestly, I'm kind of surprised. This stuff on PC would have taken a few days. I still have a hard time believing that I'm not writing this on my MB but instead on a new computer.

I guess I'll keep the MB for a little while longer to make sure I don't lose anything important on the HD. But I think I'll be selling it in 1 week if all things go smoothly...

2 comments:

  1. Nice one, I'm going to purchase the MacBook Pro 17-inch in November and you have inspired me more to get one. As for the bigger words, I'm sure I'll work it out...

    Thanks.

    Kind Regards,
    Leigh Kennedy

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  2. ;) If I had the strength to lug around a 17" MacBook Pro I would have bought one! :) Good luck on your purchase! :)

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