With the latest multi-core processors and larger amounts of memory, MacBook Pros, iMacs and even MacMinis are looking like viable replacements for at least the lower end of the MacPro line for some. But One thing the Macpro has always had was easy expansion. Want extra SATA drives on anything but a MacPro? Well, you can have your iMac altered by OtherWorldComputing, or get a kit for youMacMini from them, but that sort of thing isn’t for everyone. You can add disk via USB or FireWire, but those are both pretty slow by today’s standards

With the advent of Thunderbolt technology, several new add-ons will be coming out soon, that let you add large RAID arrays, ExpressCard/34 adapters, PCI cards (like upgraded graphics cards, something new for iMac/MacMini/laptop users) and even specialized video capture hardware (either as a PCI card or in a separate piece of hardware).

Sure, these peripheral will cost more than internal solutions in a MacPro – and not all will be as fast. But if you don’t quite need all the speed of  MacPro, and don’t want to dedicate the large tower space and pony up for the not-insiginficant power consumption of a tower, then a Mini/iMac/MacBook Pro might start to look like a good value.

For example – the video capture device I mentioned above, the Black Magic Design Intensity will be going for $299. That’s $100 more than the internal version. But to use the internal, you’d need a PCI slot, which means buying a tower. If you go for a low-end tower, you can get the 2.8 Ghz quad core Xeon for $2499. That comes with 3 GB of memory. You can go up to 16 GB by buying from a third party, like OtherWorld, for $165. So for $2655 you can have a fairly powerful machine, and for $200 more ($2855) you can have your video capture card.

If you go with a top of the line iMac, with a quad core i7 at 3.4 Ghz, a 27″ screen, and 4 GB of memory, for $2299. If you want to go to 16 GB, you can do that from OWC for $135. Then add in $300 for the external capture device, and you’re at $2725. For $130 less, you get a 27″ monitor thrown in! Of course, the Xeon in the MacPro will aways be faster, right? Well…no. Take a look at the Bare Feats site, where they compare the i7 iMac to a MacPro with 6 core 3.33 Ghz Xeons (with, by the way, costs an extra $1200). In some tests the MacPro wins, in others the iMac ties or wins. So it should come off looking pretty good against a quad core 2.8 Ghz Xeon.

Maybe you don’t need a monitor – you already have one. You can go with the top of the line MacMini ($999), which has a 2.0 Ghz quad core i7, a 500 GB disk drive instead of the 1 TB drives in the MacPro and iMacs, and 4 GB of memory. Crank the memory to 16 GB (the max Apple says you can use is 8, but OWC will sell you 16) for $880 (ouch!) and you’re at $1879. Add $300 for your capture card, and you are at $2179. A bit over $500 cheaper than the iMac, but here I think you’ll notice the speed difference, so if speed is important, you’ll want to go up to the iMac.

For many years people have wanted a “cheaper tower” option. With the new Thunderbolt gear coming out, I think that day may be here, sort of. If you need raw speed and more processors, then the MacPro is the way to go, but if you can get by with a slightly slower system, you might find the new Thunderbolt system can be a good value.

In a few years, I very well might not replace my MacPro with a tower – an iMac might be plenty. Sorry, MacPro…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGO6DJBo9MY

It used to be that the only digital display that you had to keep clean was the one on your desk. Now we have MacBooks, iMacs, iPads, iPods, iPhones, LCD/LED HDTVs, digital cameras with LCDs, etc. The good news is that the product I've been using for years works great for all of my screens. I've been using the iKlear products for as long as I can remember. Recently I discovered that I needed more of them and wanted to have them in more than one place such as my computer bag, suitcase, car, etc. That's when I discovered that they had put together a nice package contaning all the products you'll need for just about any screen. The iKleariPod, iPhone & MacBook Cleaning Kit has it all. Although it lists only Apple products in the name, it will of course work with non-Apple screens. 

The kit includes: a 2 oz. iKlear Spray bottle, 1 Large Micro-Chamois Polishing Cloth<-i LOVE THIS CLOTH, 1 Travel Size Micro-Chamois, 1 Travel size Micro-Fiber "Terry" Cloth, 6 -iKlear Step 1/Wet Travel Singles, 1-Antibacterial Microfiber Cloth.

The best part is that you get all this for a great price too! It's only $10.29 at Amazon.com (prices do fluctuate on Amazon).

Get it here for about $10.29.

I recently picked up one of the new MacBook Pros to replaced my older model.I migrated everything pretty easily with Migration Assistant, and other than having to re-authorize a lot of programs, it was pretty painless. I connected my old laptop up and booted it into Firewire Target Disk mode, then ran a firewire 800 cable between the two laptops and let it copy away for a few hours.

Of course, I have an external backup drive that I use once a week to protect the system. I also have a Western Digital MyPassport Studio USB/Firewire 800 drive that I use as a portable backup. I don't back it up as often, but the idea is to have an emergency backup drive on the road should something happen.

Well, I hooked that drive up to clone off the internal to it, and something odd happened. The backup froze up after only a couple of minutes. Super Duper was stuck, and I had to force quit the program to get rid of it. I couldn't eject the disk, either – it was obviously hung in some sort of I/O operation. So I pulled the cable out and got the nastygram from the system about properly ejecting drives. Putting it back in showed the drive had an invalid partition. Great. So I re-partitioned the drive, and even that operation hung. So by now I'm thinking I have a bad disk or bad controller. I really don't want to take this apart, because once you do, many of these Western Digital cases don't go back together. 

Instead, I take the drive over to my MacPro and repartition it. It works fine in a few seconds. Then I copy one of my disks with around 200 GB of data. It takes a while, but everything copies fine. 

Now I'm hoping it was just a bad partition and I take it back to the MacBookPro. Nope, it hangs after a few seconds of writes. So then I remember that Western Digital provided some drivers to get more speed than you get normally from the OS X standard drivers. So I load up the drivers, reboot and – the disk still hangs. 

So I finally try something I should have tried much sooner – I use the USB connection. Yes, it's much slower than Firewire 800, but guess what? It works. The drive has been cloning for a couple of hours without a hitch. Since newer MAcs can boot from USB, it will still be a good emergency device. But I'm certainly disappointed that the Firewire portion doesn't work. It's been a few years since I ran into a Mac upgrade that had a firewire compatibility issue.

So what's my point here? Well, one is to not overlook the obvious. I had actually forgotten at first that the drive did USB as well as Firewire and came close to dumping it. Only after it copied fine on another system did I have any confidence in the drive again. If I had just hooked it up via USB as soon as the Firewire failed, I'd have narrowed down the problem a bit (and gotten my drive copied a few days ago when I first tried). After getting a good copy I could have done some more experiments.

The other point to keep in mind is that not al your peripherals from an older system may make the transition to a new one, so be prepared to replace some of your peripherals if need be. If there is some device you can't do without, make sure first that it works or else be ready to purchase a substitute (or skip the upgrade). 

Third, if you have one of these drives, you'll have to switch to USB at least for now. I'll be submitting a bug report soon but who know if and when it will be fixed – since it seems to be a hardware issue, and not just a driver issue.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGgLPriZUSA

Last week I did a post where I asked Apple to Lose the Sync cable for syncing media to iOS devices. This week I have the pleasure of reviewing a software solution that in my opinion does what iTunes should do natively. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that the developers of SuperSync have a great product on the market and have filled the gap, but honestly there shouldn't be a need for this product in the first place.

The Need

Let's start with the problem. I have all of music, movie, podcasts, TV shows, etc. in iTunes on a dedicated iMac in my home. Let's call it the iTunes Server. This is the computer that we sync all of our iOS devices to for music, and other media content in my home. This is also the iMac that feeds our Apple TVs. This setup works great and keeps us from having to store the same songs, movies, etc. on multiple computers. As long as we're in the house we can stream content from the iMac to just about anything. There is one glaring problem with this setup and that is there is no easy way to "Sync" this media to another Mac (or PC) for those few times when we want to take this content with us on a laptop. Sure Apple gave us "Home Sharing" in iTunes 9, but while Home Sharing lets us drag and drop media from one computer to another, it has no automatic syncing abilities. It's a completely manual process. What I simply want to be able to do is have the same level of syncing that iTunes provides from computer to iDevice, from computer to computer over the network. I would love to open up iTunes on my MacBook Pro and use Home Sharing to sync my 5 favorite playlists over to my laptop. I own the content. I have the two computer authorized with the same iTunes account. Technically there is no reason why iTunes shouldn't be able to do this other than Apple hasn't built it in as a feature of iTunes. Even if you drag stuff over manually via Home Sharing, there isn't even a warning of duplicates. It will let you drag the same song over 3 times in a row if you don't pay attention. Let's say that you're willing to drag over your favorite songs and build the same playlists manually on your other computer, the minute you make a change on the 1st computer the 2nd computer is now out of date. 

SuperSync to the rescue

SuperSync is a separate application that you run on your two or more computers (you'll need a license for each computer). You can set either one or both up as "servers". All of the media on one computer's iTunes library will be displayed on the other computer in SuperSync. At that point you can pick and choose which media to copy over or more importantly which ones/playlists to keep in sync. This is actually is not my first time trying this applicaiton. I tried it a while back but it was missing one important feature back then that stopped me in my tracks. I have 3 favorite playlists that are "Smart Playlists". Back when I first tried this App SuperSync couldn't deal with Smart Playlists and therefore it was of no use to me. I happened to walk by their booth at Macworld Expo and listened to their pitch. I saw on the literature that Smart Playlists were now supported so I upgraded on the spot!

How does it work

SuperSync absolutely works as advertised. It's even pretty easy to use. My only complaint and suggestion to the developers is that the user interface is VERY INTIMIDATING. When you open it they show you a million things all at once. It's like walking into your office and someone has taken everything out of your drawers and filing cabinets and put them out on display in case you need them. Once you look past everything being exposed at the same time you can start to use the app. The first thing I decided to do was to delete all the songs from my MacBook Pro iTunes library. This is not required, but I wanted to start clean. The next thing I did in SuperSync was to select the playlist that I wanted to sync from the iMac and I chose all the songs and copied them over to the MacBook Pro. Next I choose "sync" for that playlist. From this point on if any changes are made on the iMac, I can just sync those changes to my MacBook Pro. It's that simple.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQI5979FWyQ

The Bottom Line

SuperSync solved my problem. The interface is daunting and could really be much more simplied by not exposing EVERYTHING all at once. Otherwise I'll gladly use this and recommend it to anyone wishing to keep two or more iTunes libraries in sync. Yes, it does sync in both directions which is really a plus if I happen to buy some songs while on the road. 

You can get SuperSync directly from their website. A two pack is on sale right now for $22!

Apple is known for making products that are easy to use. One thing they make almost too easy is the ability to Migrate your older computer to your new one. The Migration Assistant is a dream come true for anyone upgrading their Mac. You can either connect your old Mac to your new one using a cable or Migrate from your Time Machine or clone backup. There is one problem with this great feature though. I've been migrating my notebooks from one to the other for as long as I can remember. I went from the early PowerBooks to the MacBook Pros and have had several models of those. Each time I have successfully Migrated from the old computer to the New one and while I haven't had any major issues, I have been wondering for the past couple of years "just how much old baggage do I really have on this thing?" Like anyone I've installed software and deleted software, created documents and forgot about them, downloaded stuff and never trashed it when I was done. Unfortunately back in the day most Mac apps didn't have uninstallers. So you were on your own or had to use a utility to find all the various pieces to discard. Guess what? I didn't really do a whole lot of that. It was evident in my Applications, Library and Preference folders. It was like walking through an attic seeing files and folders for Apps that I hadn't used in years (ie. AppleWorks). I was seeing preferences for older versions of Apps that wouldn't even run on my current system if they were still installed.

If you took everything out of your garage, basement or attic would you put everything you just took out back in again?

It's (Past) Time To Start Over

The last time I started over, which means wiping the hard drive clean and installing everything fresh was back in the late 90's when I was forced to. I had my first major hard drive crash with no real backup to speak of. I remember it like it was yesterday (I still have the scar). I came home one Friday afternoon in the summer of 1998 and there it was, my Norton Utilities 4.0 diskette had arrived in the mail. Although there was nothing wrong with my PowerBook, I decided to pop the disc in and do a check. Some preventative maintenance if you will. The software reported that there was a problem with my drive and I opted to let it repair it. About half way through the repair process the progress bar froze. I let it sit for a couple of hours and still had no movement. I decided that it was in fact frozen and I rebooted.

I got the lovely flashing question mark which meant that my operating system was toast. I jumped in the car and drove to a local computer store to get some recovery software and I was able to recover about 10% of my data (at random). There was no choice at that point but to reformat and reinstall everything. For the next few months I would go to launch a document and remember, "oh yeah, I lost that in the crash." Needless to say I've been a fan of backing up ever since and have never touched a Norton product  anymore  

This time I wanted to start over on my own. I wanted to backup my drive, reformat it and install ONLY the software that I currently use and the documents that I currently need. I actually did three backups. I did my normal Time Machine backup, I updated my clone backup (using SuperDuper!) that I normally travel with and I made a second clone backup to store on the shelf for the next 6-12 months as a just in case. After all the backups were done I de-authorized iTunes and a couple of other Apps that were authorized to my specific system. I booted with the Snow Leopard disc that came with my 2010 MacBook Pro and used Disk Utilities to reformat my boot partition. After that I reinstalled the OS from scratch and told it NOT to copy/migrate anything over from the backup. It was both scary and exciting at the same time. It was like getting a New Mac for the first time all over again.

You spend months if not years tweaking things

The thing that I was most concerned with was losing all those little preferences that I had set over the years and tweaks to my system. I clearly put way more value on this than I needed to. After the OS was installed and I ran all the system updates and then I proceeded to install fresh copies of the software that I use every day. I installed a few drivers from fresh downloads for things like my Xerox printer and my Wacom tablet. I setup the preferences as I went along and it wasn't bad at all. I then plugged in one of the clones and copied over all of my music and photos. I also copied over my current work in progress from the documents folder, not the entire Documents folder. Since I sync to MobileMe, my calendars and contacts came down just fine into iCal and Address Book.  My email accounts are iMAP based so I did't have to worry about missing any new mail in this process. I did copy over my old Mail folder for the archived mail. 

The saviors

The biggest savior in this process was 1Password. I didn't want to bring over the old system Keychain file as I knew it had a ton of outdate stuff/certificates in it. However, there was no way that I was going to remember all my passwords on the sites I'm registered with. I reinstalled 1Password from a fresh download and then used my FREE Dropbox.com account (which I also reinstalled their software fresh) to sync back over all my 1Password passwords and logins. It just worked! 1Password also made it MUCH EASIER to do my software reinstalls because I also use it to store my Software Serial numbers. Everything in one place!

A very pleasant surprise – Time Machine picked up where it left off. I backup via Time Machine to my network OS X Server. So I'm not plugging in an external drive to do it. I know that Time Machine in the past wasn't very forgiving if you reformatted your drive and wanted to backup again. In most cases it would want to start a NEW backup instead of reusing the old one. However, by keeping the computer name the same, Time Machine was able to continue using the same backup data (sparse file) as before. Granted it took all night to figure out everything, make enough room on the drive, etc., but now I have the ability to go back to December 17th (my oldest TM backup) and grab anything I may need without plugging in one of my clone drives. 

The Bottom Line

I figured this process would take about a week to get everything back to the way I like it Actually it only took about a day and a half! When I started the process I had about 60GB's of free hard drive space. Now I have about 200GBs of free space. This is largely in part of not reinstalling a bunch of Apps that I never use and not copying over gigabytes of documents that were several years old. I still have all the photos and music/movies I had before and to this day I'm not missing anything. I thought I would be tethered to that clone drive for several days dragging stuff over as I needed it, but I was able to disconnect the drive by day three.

I'm finally past the thing that I dreaded doing for so long figuring that I never had the down time and it feels great. My computer is more responsive and it's Awesome knowing that I'm not dragging around so much unnecessary crap. While I probably will Migrate here and there in the future, I definitely won't ever go this long again without starting over! If you have been migrating from computer to computer for two or more systems, it's probably time to consider a fresh start. I would like to go to an every other computer Migration to Fresh Start ratio. 

Undoubtedly there are some brand new Mac users out there that just got their first Mac as a holiday gift. If you were to ask me "Hey Terry as a new Mac user, what should I know?"

Here are the 1st 3 things I would tell you:

1) If your new Mac is a portable Mac like a MacBook, the 1st thing I would do is setup the security to require a password upon startup/wake from sleep. Although Mac OS X has you setup a Password for your new account, it logs you into that account automatically every time you boot up. This is probably fine for most desktop Macs at home, however if your Mac is stolen, the thief would also be able to log in automatically. This makes all of your data and identity that much easier to access. Turn off the auto login to at least make them work a little harder.

2) Get an external drive and backup via Time Machine. If you want to take things up a notch, partition that New External drive using Disk Utility and use one partition to backup to with Time Machine and the other partition to do a SuperDuper! bootable clone to. This way if your drive ever crashes you would not only be able to restore to a new drive via Time Machine, but you would also be able to boot up immediately from the other partiton and immediately be productive. This is crucial if you use your MacBook for presentations as it could take hours to restore from a Time Machine backup and the show must go on.

3) Join your local Mac Users Group. Users Groups are a great resource to learn about your new Mac. As a new Mac user you will find that most users groups out there will go out of their way to help you when you're stuck! Find your local group here.

Are you a New iPad, iPhone or iPod touch user?

If you just got a new iDevice, then you should check out the "Must Have Apps" over at BestAppSite.com

A friend of mine/MacGroup member came by the house last night and told me that she was thinking of buying a new Mac soon. I asked her about her current setup and needless to say it was over 5 years old (she admitted to still using a Floppy based sneaker net between Macs ) and she was starting to feel the pains of not being able to run certain new Apps that she would like to run, so it's time. Now the big question: Which Mac?

1) Go with a notebook

Although desktop iMacs offer more bang for the buck in terms of price/performance, I'm still recommending to most people I know to get a notebook if their budgets will allow. Why? Simply because they are portable. Unless you fancy yourself the kind of person that goes to a desk works on a computer and then leaves that desk to do other things, then you'll probably get more enjoyment out of a notebook computer. You can use it in any room you like and take it with you when you travel. They cost more and are more fragile, but I love having a MacBook Pro as my primary Mac. 

2) Get an external display

OK, this is really part 2 of tip #1, but if you do go with a Notebook Mac and you're thinking there are times when you'll want to work at your desk with a nice large display, full size keyboard and mouse, then I would say go with an external display, keyboard, mouse and leave it at your desk. You can plug your MacBook in whenever you want and have that desktop computer feel if you want it and when you want it.

3) Go low end or high end

This is the age old debate. Do you buy the bare minimum configuration because it will be obsolete in a few years anyway? Or do you buy the high end configuration/model so that it lasts you longer? To answer this you would have to decide what kind of person you are. Some people upgrade more often (like whenever a new model comes out). Therefore it's probably a waste for those people to buy on the high-end side. Others like to hold on to their Macs as long as they can. Those people should probably buy the higher end models so that performance is still good in a couple of years for the more demanding Apps and OS's that may be coming down the road.

4) Buy as much RAM as you can

I still say that RAM is probably the single biggest performance boost that you can have without having to buy a new Mac more often. The more RAM you have the more Apps you can run at the same time and the larger the files are that you'll be able to handle. In the past I would have always told you to buy your RAM from another vendor and either install it yourself or have a pro do it. However, in recent times Apple's RAM prices have fallen more in line with 3rd party vendors. I still say price compare before you buy, but with my last Mac Pro purchase I went with 12GB of RAM from Apple because it was only a few dollars more than buying it elsewhere. Also if you go with Apple RAM they can never blame the RAM as the problem if you start having issues with your computer.

5) Yes, get AppleCare

AppleCare is like car insurance. You hate buying it but you're glad you have it if something happens. Don't read my analogy the wrong way though. AppleCare is NOT insurance. It's an extended Warranty. If you drop your MacBook and the screen cracks as a result, you're on your own. AppleCare doesn't cover user accidents. It covers defects and problems with the computer for an extra 2 years beyond the standard 1 year warranty. It's a gamble, but it's paid off for me more times than what I've paid for it. 

Bonus Tip

Since #2 was actually part 2 of number 1, here's another tip: If you don't have to have the latest and greatest Mac, you can often save money by buying the model that was just discontinued. For example, Apple usually comes out with new Macbooks and iMacs every year. If you time it right you can save a few hundred dollars by buying the model that was just replaced the minute the new ones are announced. It will still be new in the box and have the same warranty as if you had bought it a month before. It just won't be the current model (anymore). 

Here's a quick tip for travelers that travel with both a MacBook and an iOS device such as an iPad, iPod touch or iPhone. Although I usually travel with an Airport Express for those times when I'm in a hotel room with Internet access via ethernet, sometimes I'm in a conference center and I'm connected to the center's internet via ethernet directly into my MacBook Pro. In those cases I'm usally doing a software demo and my Airport Express is back in the hotel room. Also in those cases I'm usually either using my iPad/iPhone and/or I'm presenting with colleagues that also need internet access. The problem is that in those cases there are rarely multiple ethernet plugs and nor is there WiFi (well sometimes there's WiFi, but usually at an additional cost). 

I do the next best thing

I plug the ethernet cable in my MacBook Pro and then I enable Internet Sharing via the Sharing System Preferences. This in effect turns your MacBook notebook into a temporary WiFi hotspot for other devices to share your internet connection. You can share any internet connection you have to the Mac over any other connection the Mac has built-in.

For example, if you are connected to the internet via ethernet, then that means you can share that connection over the Mac's built-in AirPort (WiFi) card. If you are connected to the internet via AirPort then you could share that connection to another Mac/PC over ethernet. This even works for those 3G USB data cards too. So if you were connected to the internet via a 3G USB/ExpressCard data card you could share that internet connection to other devices over ethernet OR AirPort. You can do any combination, you just can't share the connection you have over the SAME type of connection. So if you're connected via AirPort you can NOT share that connection over AirPort. Best of all if you share your connection over AirPort you can even password protect your temporary WiFi hotspot to keep others off your connection and from stealing your bandwidth. 

My boss was very appreciative of the fact that when we were in London and I was presenting, she could be in the audience with her MacBook Pro and catch up on email "wirelessly" during the breaks since I had the only ethernet connection, on stage, as there was no other WiFi connection in the venue.

Remember to turn it OFF when you're done

When you're done sharing your internet connection over AirPort you will need to go back in and STOP sharing the connection when you're done. Otherwise you will not be able to access the internet over AirPort again until you do. Your AirPort menu bar icon will change to a sharing icon to serve as a constant reminder that you still have Internet Sharing on.

As I packed for my second trip to Lancaster (for yet another game convention) I came *this close* (see how far apart my hands are?) to leaving behind my laptop. Thanks to the iPad, I can very nearly do everything I need to do while away from home. There's just a few things that trip me up.

One is PDF reading. Sure, the iPad reads most PDFs just fine. But I regularly get PDFs with annotations in them. Even though Preview on the Mac handles these files pretty well, for some reason the iPad and iPhone don't – the annotations just don't show up. It doesn't matter what program you use to read them, either, because they all use the built-in iOS frameworks.

Next is connecting up with work (I know, I'm on vacation, but it appears I am invaluable at times – just not raise time<g>). I can connect up OK, but trying to manipulate a lot of text, especially with cut, copy and paste, without an actual mouse, is pretty difficult. I've tried a few different programs for remote control, and none of them are quite as easy to use as I need. It seems to take a lot of time to get things done without an actual mouse (and yes, the machines at work are Windows-based – just try running Windows natively without a mouse to see how tough that can be).

Printing is pretty-well solved, although it can require jumping through some hoops. Still, the overall functionality of the iPad is *so close* I can almost taste it. Maybe I can practice a bit more with the mouse movements…

Anybody out there been able to replace their laptop, even for a short time, with an iPad? If not, what roadblocks do you have?

The MacBook Pro i use for work recently got upgraded. If you remember last week's post on "When should you buy a New Mac?" You'll remember that I had just placed my order at work for the newly introduced MacBook Pro 15" Core i7. Well it arrived last week and I thought I would take a few minutes to share my first impressions.

My Config

8GB RAM, 15.4" Antiglare LED Display, 2.66 GHz Intel Core i7 processor, 500GB 7200 RPM drive

The Design

There's nothing really new with the design. My last MacBook Pro was the 1st generation uni-body enclosure. So I was already familiar with this design and Apple hasn't really changed it much. They replaced the ExpressCard slot with an SD card reader and I was already mentally prepared for that. Otherwise from a look and feel perspective It feels just like my old one. Don't take that as a knock. There wasn't anything wrong with the design (other than I still prefer the older trackpads with a separate button).

The Display

One of the first things that caught me totally by surprise was that I didn't know that Apple changed the default resolution of the 15.4" display. It's now 1680×1050 as opposed to the old one being 1440×900. Of course the advantage is that you see more on screen and the disadvantage is that everything is smaller. It took about a day to get used to it, now I don't give it a second thought and I do appreciate having more of my documents display without scrolling. However, if you have a hard time reading/seeing small things on screen this could be a problem for you. Sure you can change the resolution, but anything other than the native resolution will be soft unless you use an external display. The one thing I  wasn't crazy about with my last MacBook Pro was the very reflective glossy display. I lived with it and it wasn't the end of the world, but apparently Apple listened to the cries of thousands of photographers and offered an anti-glare option. I went for that option this time around. Right off the bat I could tell I was going to like it better. Not only is it antiglare, but it's also recessed just like the previous aluminum MacBook Pros, which means my 3M privacy screen fits in it nicely again.

It's Quiet

My last MacBook Pro seemed to always be running the fan. Yes, I do lots of processor intensive work, so the fan is on all the time even in this new one, but it's much much quieter than my last one.

The Battery Life is AMAZING!

I never ever ever pay attention to Apple's claims on battery life when it comes to a MacBook. I never pay attention to the claims, because I never get anywhere near what they specify the machine can do. I think my last MacBook Pro was rated at 4-5 hours of battery life. I'm always lucky if I can do 2.5-3 hours. On average it's probably closer to 2 hours. So when I saw the claims on this one doing 8-9 hours on battery I said "yeah right!" Do I get anywhere near that? NO! However, I do get double what I used to get. I can easily go 4 hours or more now on battery and for me that's huge! I haven't even tried any battery conservation techniques. The 4 hours I got was on full regular use, screen as bright as it can be, keyboard light on, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, etc. This means that on a plane, with my battery saving techniques in place, I should easily be able to get 5 hours now. So while 8-9 seems like a pipe dream (at least from my experience), I'll definitely take 5 (maybe 6).

Migrating over

It's always a debate with me to either migrate over from my old Mac or start FRESH with the new one. Starting FRESH is better because you're not bringing over unnecessary baggage and problems from your years of migrating. However, starting fresh takes longer to get everything reinstalled and back to the way you like things. I always seem to bail on starting fresh because usually I don't have the downtime it would take to do so. Once again I migrated…sigh. I used Ethernet to do so figuring that Gigabit Ethernet on both Macs would be faster than Firewire 800. Even so, moving over 350GB's of stuff can take hours and it did (about 4 to be exact). However, everything came over nicely and is up and running. 

The Speed is Awesome!

At the end of the day this update is all about speed for me. One of main reasons I waited till 2010 and didn't go with the 2009 model is because I figured Apple would put the Core i7 processor in the MacBook Pro just like they did in the iMac. I'm glad I waited! Knowing that Adobe Creative Suite 5 was coming and that the move to 64 bit was underway (Photoshop CS5, After Effects CS5 and Premiere Pro CS5 are now all 64 bit), I not only wanted as much RAM as I could get, but I also wanted the fastest processor I could get in a Mac laptop. That's the Core i7 and it doesn't disappoint. Everything is snappier! Here are my Xbench results:

Click the graphics below to enlarge

Here's the results from the the NEW MacBook Pro Core i7

Here are the results from my 2008 MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo

and just for giggles, I ran the same test on my "production machine", my 1st generation Mac Pro (yes, I'm in the market for a new one. Just waiting for the 2010 model)

My new MacBook Pro got a better overall score than my Mac Pro!

The Bottom Line

While this MacBook Pro isn't a revolutionary update over my 2008 model, it has all the right things in it to make the upgrade worthwhile. I try to plan my purchases to get the most out of the latest processor, graphics and RAM improvements. This move was worth the wait.