New 15" MacBook Pro with SSD
Just over a month ago, I reduced my computing machinery from 3 to 1. Since I was running to work, this quickly presented a problem of how to get my laptop to/from the office. I decided to go for the "no home computer" about half the time and it was a fairly pleasant experience. It's hard to stay up late and hack away on open source when all you have is an iPhone.
To be perfectly honest, I only made it about 2 weeks before I ordered a new laptop, but I cancelled the order shortly after. Last weekend, I re-ordered and my new 15" MacBook Pro arrived this past weekend. Here's the specs:
- Processor: 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
- Memory: 4 GB 1067 MHz DDR3
I also chose the solid-state drive (SSD) because I'd heard it's faster. I did some rough performance comparisons against my old laptop (a 2-year-old 17" MacBook Pro) and found it's quite a bit faster.
For these tests, the computers have exactly the same software and OS (I restored my new MBP from my old one). For the tests below, I used Java version "1.5.0_16" and had JAVA_OPTS set to the following:
-Xms512M -Xmx768M -XX:PermSize=256m -XX:MaxPermSize=512m -Djava.awt.headless=true -XX:+CMSClassUnloadingEnabled -XX:+CMSPermGenSweepingEnabled -XX:+UseConcMarkSweepGC.
| Computer | Operation | Time (mm:ss) |
|---|---|---|
| New MacBook Pro with OS X 10.5.6 (2.8 GHz, 4 GB RAM) | appfuse: mvn install | 3:23 |
| cp -r appfuse appfuse2 | 0:28 | |
| gwt-project: mvn install | 1:24 | |
| Old MacBook Pro with OS X 10.5.6 (2.33 GHz, 3 GB RAM) | appfuse: mvn install | 4:11 |
| cp -r appfuse appfuse2 | 0:56 | |
| gwt-project: mvn install | 2:21 |
From these numbers, you can see that it's around 20% faster for building AppFuse (2.1-SNAPSHOT) and almost twice as fast at copying files and building the GWT project I'm working on. Needless to say, I'm impressed and pleased with my purchase.
Update: New MacBook Pros came out today with a faster CPU (2.93 GHz) and 256 GB SSD. I was able to call Apple and get a full refund on mine. Thanks Apple!
Congrats on the new MBP. I got mine about 10 days ago. One thing you are not going to like is the battery drains while asleep. Over night it loses between 20% and 50% of its charge. There is a thread at Apple on this... nearly 12000 views and 237 posts. One of the most active:
http://is.gd/kBJK
Calls to Apple state they have no open issues. I have a sneaky suspicion that this is a hardware problem and Apple is keeping mums on it.
Posted by Jeff Genender on March 02, 2009 at 03:39 PM MST #
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Posted by Joy on March 03, 2009 at 07:55 PM MST #
Sounds great, I'm thinking about upgrading my 17 to a new one with SSD HD too.
What about the heat generated under the laptop? Is it any less with the SSD?
I think the 15 generated a little less than my 17 - which gets incredibly hot while compiling. Quite uncomfortable to touch actually :( Its the only downside to this fabuolous laptop.
I was so pleased to see the anti-glare still available in the 17 too :)
Cheers
Richard
Posted by Richard on March 03, 2009 at 10:45 PM MST #
I wonder how easy it is to change the hard drive on these things?
I would consider getting one with the basic SATA hard-disk and swapping it with a SSD later on this year as the new generation discs come to market and the price comes down a ways.
Buying a SSD drive now is a bit like buying those first generation 17" LCDs in 2003. Very cool at the time, but expensive and very rapidly out of date.
Posted by Aaron on March 04, 2009 at 03:25 PM MST #
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Posted by R on August 12, 2009 at 04:43 AM MDT #