Having moved from PC to Mac a couple month ago, and having become a fan
boy overnight, I thought I'd chime in quick. I went with the 17" i7
MacBook Pro with 8Gb of RAM. I do quite a bit of development,
graph-algorithm calculations, and work with virtual machines, hence the
maxed-out specs. A few observations:
* The machine is lightning fast, and compared to my now retired
windows laptop incredibly stable. The nVidia/Intel graphics
switching works very well, especially when plugged into an
external monitor.
* It seems bourgeois, but the backlit keyboard is /ridiculously
/nice (especially if you spend a lot of time on planes, working at
night, etc.) The 'spaces' function lets you have multiple
desktops /a la /Linux. If you install xCode, you can pretty much
compile any of the open-source software without too much heartburn.
* As rumored in various forums, the i7 does run a little hot when
you're stressing it -- nothing worse than comparable windows
laptops that I've used, but enough to be uncomfortable after a
half hour or so without something under it (especially I think
with the aluminum body).
* The battery life is moderate -- anywhere from 2-4 hours depending
on how conservative I am with it. Being able to have multiple
batteries and carry spares is the /only thing I miss/ about my old
windows machine.
* Suspend /works like it's supposed to/. I don't know what other
people's experiences with Windows are, but I never had a windows
box that could survive a week on the road of constant suspends and
hibernations. I've never once had a problem with the Mac. I
don't feel like I'm always fighting with the hardware and/or the
drivers to keep the thing from crashing.
* I've yet to find a tool that I had in Windows or Linux that I
couldn't replace or find and install/compile for Mac (e.g. Tor,
nmap, VNC, PhpAdmin, Chrome, Dropbox, Blackberry Desktop). MS
Office Mac 2008 is /alright/ once you get used to it, though it
can be glitchy when saving files across Windows SAMBA mounts
(mainly because it seems that Microsoft chose to write their own
application-level network stack into Office, as opposed to using
the Mac native ones).
* The 17" is a little bulky to travel with, but as a matter of
personal preference I'd rather have screen real-estate over small
footprint.
In short, I'm completely impressed -- I'm a computer scientist that had
gotten sick of using computers. The MacBook Pro made me a fan.
Darryl
On 1/11/11 1:51 PM, Parks, Raymond wrote:
Depends upon the type of software and app development you perform. If
you're writing Objective C, C++, or C code, then you need to compile and
you'll want a strong processor with lots of memory. If you're doing web
development, you might want to run multiple VMs, which works better with
memory maxed and as many cores in your processor as you can get. If
you're doing Cuda development, you probably should consider a 17" so you
can run the code on the nVidia processor and your display on the Intel
processor.
Ray Parks [email protected]
Consilient Heuristician Voice: 505-844-4024
ATA Department Mobile: 505-238-9359
http://www.sandia.gov/scada Fax: 505-844-9641
http://www.sandia.gov/idart Pager:505-951-6084
On 1/11/11 11:36 AM, Grant Holland wrote:
I'm considering a Macbook Pro. Any advice from the Mac folks...?
My usage: Software and app dev., general office stuff. I do very little
high-end graphics.
Specific questions:
-Is the Mac Pro the clear choice for a laptop?
-Is the 15" the clear choice over the 13"? - for the $600 difference?
-If I go 15", which processor:
- i5 2.4 GH - (base $1799)?
- i5 2.53 GH - (base $1999)?
- i7 2.66 GH - (base $2199)?
-Is 4GB enough mem for most folks?
-Is the MacPro "the one to get" - or is there something else I should know?
-Any other advice?
Thanks for the benefits of your collective wisdom!
Grant
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============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
