15" mbp i7, lasts me 8 hours

I'm thinking bout getting a MacBook Pro but haven't had any experience with them. I haven't used an Apple computer, well since the Macintosh and the Apple II plus when I was a kid. How is the per

I also haven't kept up with the newer processers, well not since the Core II Duo's came out. Don't know much about the Core i3, i5 and i7 processors. I'll also be using the laptop mainly with Windows 7 installed. Mostly because I'll be using AutoCAD and possibly Revit 90% of the time on it. I'm assuming for the money and performance, I should just get a PC laptop then?

^^^ Yeah, just get a good Windows laptop.

For some reason i find photo editing on the mac is so much easier to use. Anyone feel the same way?

I actually like Photoshop on a PC more than on a Mac, only because on a Mac, you can't get rid of the desktop in the background. It really bothers me. They work the same though.

Thanks Senna, now I've just gotta find one that I like.

Because of your review of the MacBook Senna, I wen't ahead and spent $1,400 on my MacBook Pro and I LOVE it.

How much are you willing to spend? Eurocom, Falcon Northwest & Lenovo (W700 series) make amazing desktop, err, more like workstation replacement laptops, but they can get pricey. None of them will be as light & compact as a Macbook Pro though.

The Lenovo W700 series laptops have a secondary screen that pops out from the side for your palettes so you can use the main screen for your image.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/19469...t_demands.html

Sweet! :) It's nice how the bloody thing just works, eh?

8 gigs ram and SSD make the macbook pro even more sweeter

13 inch? specs? just wondering how much im gonna have to spend

tia

Yeah, I just put in 8GB RAM and a Western Digital Scorpio Black 500GB 7200rpm HD. Noticeable speed boost! I wanted an SSD, but the capacities aren't there yet.

I completely AGREE. I don't get why they made the background transparent. Often times I'll have Picasa open, then want to switch to PS to edit some imagnes, its very distracting to have stuff open in the background. Even with nothing else open, it's distracting with the desktop in the background. There isn't a setting in photoshop to change this, is there?

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y173/RCubed/png.png
Is this what you mean?

^ Utter fail on my part. Thanks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Not quite....in that view, the main image takes up the screen. What if you have multiple images in their small, individual windows?

Like this:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...09-at-1154.jpg

There is no way to get rid of the background like you can in the Windoze version of Photoshop.

Definitely a speed boost. Coupled with the 64bit kernel, it runs like lightning.

Ah.
Another mode you can try is the "Application Frame" under window.
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y17...0at91615AM.png
This greys the backgrounds and puts your multiple images in the tabs. But you can drag the tabs out.

I think this is what youre looking for?
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y17...0at92918AM.png

13-inch: 2.4GHz
Intel Core 2 Duo
4GB Memory
250GB hard drive1
SD card slot
Built-in battery (10 hours)2
NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics



4GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x2GB
250GB Serial ATA Drive @ 5400 rpm
Backlit Keyboard (English) / User's Guide
SuperDrive 8x (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)


It was $1,199.00 USD at BestBuy for me, they took off a $100.00 for some reason and i got it for less, I bought a protective case too and everything ended up $1,399.00 after taxes and warranty and everything.

battery still at 98%. Almost a year now.

is the lack of TRIM support detrimental to daily users? i installed one for a friend last year and it runs identical a year later as far as i can tell. and he uses it as his main computer. I'm not an expert at this but from wiki: "Although tools to "reset" some drives to a fresh state were already available before the introduction of TRIM, they also delete all data on the drive, which makes them impractical to use for ongoing optimization." So I can clone it sector by sector out onto an external drive, run the wipe tool, put it all back, and gain the performance again?

edit: this answered it somewhat

senna you should look at the mce optibays (or comparable alternatives) that swaps our your optical drive and put it in a usb enclosure. that way you can have a ~120gb SSD + your WD500BLK.

imo they should really bring back the removable batteries. some ppl leave their computer on to d/l stuff all day. can't imagine what their battery life is like now. maybe the new batteries are that much better.

Pretty much what you read in the article holds true. I haven't had any degradation issues since putting the drive in.

Have you encountered any issues running the 64-bit kernel?

I think Snow Leopard defaults to the 32-bit kernel.
Which method did you use to enable the 64-bit kernel?

I have 2 SSD's in my MBP and I haven't seen any degradation issues.
Both are from OCZ, 1 is a Vertex and the other a Vertex 2. Both have built in system independent cleaning routines (aka garbage collection).
This means even if you don't have trim supported by OS X, they will clean up the drive during idle to maintain good performance.

The key thing about SSD's is erasing and formatting. Make sure you use the software recommended by the manufacturer. If just reformat and partition a drive you might misalign the memory map and your performance will suffer.
One of my drives would refuse to write once I reached 40 GB and it would hang the computer.

When you reboot the computer, hold down the '4' & '6' keys until the computer boots up. The first time you do it, it takes longer than usual to boot up. Then you have to follow these instructions: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3773

You only have to edit Terminal once. After that you can switch between 32 bit & 64 bit simply pressing down the '3' & '2' or '6' & '4' keys while booting up.

The only issue I had was that image file icons stopped showing the previews - I had to hit the space bar to see the image preview.