One year with the 17" MacBook Pro

I mentioned recently that it wouldn't be a bad idea to follow up on how my laptop has been after a year of use. To summarize, it is, as was my previous 15" model, the best computer I've ever had.

The durability is probably the biggest improvement they made since the original Intel-based machines, which weren't that different from the PowerBooks before them. The machined aluminum bodies are so rigid that when you pick even the beefy 17" up by its corner, it doesn't flex. The battery is also incredibly durable, and I was surprised that just yesterday, after a full charge, the health went from 99% back to 100%. I've been pretty careful to drain it completely before charing, which allegedly makes a difference. As for the life, I've had no problem getting the promised eight hours of "wireless productivity" when in dark situations that require a less bright screen. In practice, with a Parallels VM fired up and more common screen brightness, I'm doing around 6.5 hours. That's still night and day from any previous computer I've had.

I was admittedly skeptical about the glossy screen, but it hasn't been an issue 99% of the time. The only time I couldn't use it was just a few weeks ago in the Richmond airport, sitting next to a window with bright sun. I suppose a matte screen wouldn't have been any better. As "glare" is just a reflection, I think some people are somehow trained to look at the reflection and not the screen, and those are the people who hate the glossy. I have no issues at all, and photos and video seem to "pop" more with the glossy. Even text in Visual Studio looks better to me (though I have kind of crappy monitors at work to compare to).

The screen's size and resolution are what compelled me to get the 17", and I don't regret that at all. Running Visual Studio full screen is awesome, and cutting HD video in Final Cut is actually productive at this size and resolution. If they offered a 15" model with a higher resolution, I think that would be just as suitable, but I honestly don't feel that the laptop is too large at 17", except maybe on a Northwest Airlines plane.

Performance has been a non-issue until upgrading to Parallels 5. I get a lot more disk thrashing now while the VM has a 2 gig memory allocation. It depends on what else is open on the OS X side. On my desktop iMac, with twice the RAM, and a VM with twice the memory, I don't have those problems, so I may upgrade. It's not a consistent problem, so I'm on the fence at the moment.

So overall, it has been a great computer that has done everything I wanted. It's also well-traveled, with trips to Las Vegas, Florida twice, Virginia, Hawaii and Seattle twice (once the hard way, driving, and in one direction). It was priced about the same as a comparable Dell at the time, with obviously higher build quality. I liked it so much that I got Diana a 13" for her birthday!

There are still obnoxious people on the Internet who think that these things are too expensive for what they are (they generally aren't, especially at the start of a component refresh cycle), but even if they weren't, I'm OK spending more on something with such great build quality, and that runs OS X, which is still my favorite way to roll for every day Web nonsense. I still have no tolerance for Apple's dev tools and environment, but for consumer stuff, I dig it. I suspect this one will last me three years as well.