The Lowdown For The MacBook Pro Winter 2011 Launching
The MacBook Pro had been initially unveiled in 2006, upgrading the PowerBook G4. Made for professionals on the go, Apple continued to refine their family of high-performance laptops every year. Apple has raised the bar once again with the launch of the MacBook Pro Winter 2011 upgrade, in numerous key benchmarks.
What’s Good About Them
Speed has been improved tremendously by using the new “Sandy Bridge” generation of Intel Core i processors. The Intel Core i5 2620M is the new engine under the hood of the 13-inch MacBook Pro. 15-inch and 17-inch designs will have quad-core power which is necessary for running high-end programs like Final Cut Pro and Adobe Photoshop efficiently. The actual memory remains the same at 4 GB although that can now expand to 16 GB of RAM. Graphics is easily the most demanding use of these systems, and the AMD Radeon HD 6490M allows them to set new speed records. For the most demanding people, the Radeon HD 6750M can be added as an option. Don’t be concerned about losing out on battery life, as the Intel HD Graphics 3000 runs very efficiently. By simply upgrading the brand new models Apple is once again leading the laptop arena in all the performance benchmarks that are worth measuring.
The particular connection for the Apple LED Cinema Display has been upgraded to a new technology as well. Intel’s completely new Thunderbolt technology offers much more versatility in how the port functions. With speeds up to 12 times faster than the old FireWare 800 interface, high capacity hard drives will finally have the performance boosts that they depend on for professionals to transfer huge amounts of data. Additionally it is flexible allowing devices to daisy-chain off of a single Thunderbolt channel without any performance degradation.
The previous iSight webcam has been replaced with the FaceTime HD camera, just like those found in the iPhone 4 and iPad 2. Apple has specified 720p as the brand new standard resolution for video telephone calls using the FaceTime HD camera.
Disappointments
A single major portion that has not been replaced however, is the battery, which suggests it’s going to now last a shorter time between charges. Nevertheless, with nearly 7 hours of power while the wireless is running, it is actually difficult for competing multimedia laptop computers to possess that battery life. The MacBook Pro 13-inch also receives a slight downgrade as it makes use of the Intel integrated graphics without an AMD or NVIDIA counterpart. Video gaming performance is a little bit slower though the Intel HD 3000 graphics is far better than previous generations and also it is just as efficient.
Summary
The benchmarks for the high-end notebook category have been significantly improved with the release of the MacBook Pro Winter 2011 models. You can be positive that your new model is able to run next generation applications without any strain.