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The most helpful favorable review
The most helpful critical review
32 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
Macbook Pro 17-inch (Mid 2009)...fantastic desktop replacement
Simply put, the best laptop I've ever owned. I configured it through Apple with the 128GB SSD and apps install incredibly fast and launch instantly. The screen is a marvel, 1920 X 1200 with LCD backlight. I opted to go with the glossy, so there are some reflections but only when using directly in front of a bright window, otherwise its not a problem (for me anyway)...
Published 13 months ago by Greg L. Stewart
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88 of 112 people found the following review helpful:
Great in OS X, but dismal support for XP, Vista and BootCamp
One year ago, disgusted by dismal experiences with multiple PC manufacturers (Dell, Acer, among others) in terms of their terrible support for Windows (along with poor hardware reliability issues and very poor servicing of hardware), I took the plunge and decided I would buy a Mac. I basically have to have windows XP because it's required to interface with various...
Published 7 months ago by D. F. Watt
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32 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
Macbook Pro 17-inch (Mid 2009)...fantastic desktop replacement, July 3, 2009
This review is from: Apple MacBook Pro MC226LL/A 17-Inch Laptop (Personal Computers)
Simply put, the best laptop I've ever owned. I configured it through Apple with the 128GB SSD and apps install incredibly fast and launch instantly. The screen is a marvel, 1920 X 1200 with LCD backlight. I opted to go with the glossy, so there are some reflections but only when using directly in front of a bright window, otherwise its not a problem (for me anyway).
Bear in mind, this is a BIG laptop...its a tray table...but very sturdy and NO flex in the chassis. The trackpad is also very useable, although I still opted for a mouse (Logitech M555b Bluetooth, highly recommended also).
It doesn't heat up much and has incredible battery life...if I switch to the 9400M integrated graphics (which is fine for most uses), I can get 6 hours on a charge no problem, with WiFi, Bluetooth, brightness at about 60% and the SSD as the primary HD. With a different config YMMV, but I'd bet 5-6 hours is the norm for this machine.
All-in-all, a great laptop. I'll have this 2-3 years no problems.
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88 of 112 people found the following review helpful:
Great in OS X, but dismal support for XP, Vista and BootCamp, December 18, 2009
This review is from: Apple MacBook Pro MC226LL/A 17-Inch Laptop (Personal Computers)
One year ago, disgusted by dismal experiences with multiple PC manufacturers (Dell, Acer, among others) in terms of their terrible support for Windows (along with poor hardware reliability issues and very poor servicing of hardware), I took the plunge and decided I would buy a Mac. I basically have to have windows XP because it's required to interface with various hospital systems, but I thought if the Windows partition went down (a virtual guarantee with Windows XP at some point), at least I would have a reliable Mac system as a backup. I expected a far better experience, given the customer service ratings of Apple, which are far better than any PC manufacturer. Little did I know what I was getting into.
The XP partition blue screened on a regular basis, from the first moment it was created. Microsoft of course makes it anything but easy to figure out why XP is bluescreening - part of their effort to duck and cover around the OS being a buggy mess. (Any misbehaving driver will bring it down.) And Apple's position on this consistently was that "this is not their problem." Adding insult to injury, I was charged for support by Microshaft (despite this partition being built from a new copy of Windows XP professional). Well, what else is new - this is standard PC fare, and the primary reason why so many people are switching to Macs.
What was a revelation was to discover (after using a great little program called BlueScreenView that not even Microsoft was aware of) that the driver causing ALL the blue screens was Apple's proprietary mouse driver for the touchpad/mouse. Even more stunning, I found out that Apple apparently was aware of this all along (12+ months), but failed to contact users, and failed to correct the mouse driver issues for over one year, despite numerous complaints on the part of numerous boot Camp users about the mouse driver causing major problems. Apple's position on this is that all Windows issues have nothing to do with them. That might be true . . . except for the small fact that Apple was writing the XP driver software for the mouse that was causing all the problems. This kind of "it's not my responsibility" attitude is something you expect from Microsoft, or perhaps from Dell, but you don't expect from Apple.
After roughly one year of difficulties (blue screens almost every day or every other day, bringing down the system and causing loss of work and endless grief along with two corrupted C drive partitions), I was able to find a fix for this, no thanks to Apple. It's been a shock to see Apple operate the way that every other big corporation in America appears to operate. The Mac side of course works just fine, but I bought this system to use it primarily as a PC (with Mac OS X capability as a backup). If you are never going to use as a dual OS system, this is a fine computer and OS. However, I would strongly caution anyone against buying an Apple laptop or desktop system if they intend to have serious dual boot capability and intend to use some version of Windows more than 10% of the time. What you'll find is a serious lack of support and a position of complete denial of responsibility by Apple for anything that happens under boot Camp. Although they finally provided a viable mouse driver (hence I upgraded this review from one to two stars), they could have not stonewalled me for a year, and simply admitted that their driver was buggy and crash-prone, but they didn't.
Given that this dual operating system capability has become one of Apple's strong selling cards and responsible for a significant fraction of sales, this position by Apple has to be seen as egregious, and totally unacceptable. My discouraged conclusion is that if you intend to use this system to operate any version of Windows, you have to be aware that you will be on your own. Microsoft will regard all OS issues under BootCamp as Apple's problem, Apple will regard them as Microsoft's problem, and in the final analysis, they are all going to be YOUR problem. Watch out!! (and unfortunately the virtual emulation of Windows under Parallels or VMWare is no solution either - earlier versions were massively buggy!!)
I am confident that this review will be unpopular with the Mac faithful (leading to poor ratings!) - attacking Apple is about like insulting someone's mother in some people's eyes. Such loyalty is admirable, and speaks to some of Apple's strengths - which make this experience all the more puzzling. But for anyone that has struggled with an XP, Vista or (soon) Window 7 partition on a MacBook, this experience should be a MAJOR caution. For those who will never cross into the unreliable and buggy world of Windows on this hardware (a most fortunate majority of owners spared all the headaches of the PC world), this is probably a five star system. But it is striking to see such disparity between Apple on these two sides of an issue (OS X support vs Windows support), and it's really a shame. I had hoped for far better.
Footnote April 2010: After finally getting updated drivers from Apple, I have now have four months go by without a single blue screen of death. For this reason I am updating my rating to three stars. I wish Apple had made the updated mouse/touchpad driver widely available earlier, and had informed users of the fact that this driver was very buggy and crash-prone. The Apple side is a five star product, and between that and the restored functionality of the XP/Windows side, I am changing my overall rating upwards. Hopefully Apple learned something that will ensure that future BootCamp users not have to go through what I went through.
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31 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
Never back to PCs, November 1, 2009
This review is from: Apple MacBook Pro MC226LL/A 17-Inch Laptop (Personal Computers)
This is my second Mac, an upgrade in size and disk capacity from my first Mac, a MacBook Pro 15 with Intel processor. There was nothing whatever wrong with that old Mac - after 3 1/2 years I just needed more area on the screen for my work and did not mind the much greater disk capacity of the new model The most telling aspect of my first Mac had been that it never "crashed", unlike generations of PCs I had used. If I managed to do something really "naughty" to my Mac, it sometimes closed a software program - but without noticeable loss of data. In stark contrast to my PC days, I never had to scramble to recover data. The worst I ever did was to inadvertently delete some ancient email messages. They proved easily recoverable from the external backup. Yes, initially it took a few hours to re-learn keystrokes that are different on the Mac than on PCs. I saved that back in no time, then received big dividends because my Mac never crashed. It just always works as it is designed to do.
The most amazing experience with the new Mac was the transfer of my "stuff" from old to new Mac. I went at it with some trepidation because it had taken seemingly endless hours to migrate "stuff" from old to new PCs. By contrast, everything had migrated from old Mac to new Mac in less than one hour via firewire - and all worked perfectly. By 'everything" I mean not just all data - files, records, contact information, photos, calendar, etc.- but also all software I had installed on the old Mac. And, everything was exactly where and how I was used to it, and everything worked as it should on my brilliant and larger new Mac. It is now backed up by even greater memory and processor speed, and runs on Snow Leopard - which is just as flawlessly reliable as the previous operating system but faster and more efficient, with a few neat new features strewn in.
I can still hardly believe that it took years, no decades, before I got fed up and dumped PCs and their flawed operating systems and incompatible software and data bases for something that works. A student in my family just "took the plunge" to Mac when she inherited my first Mac - she is thrilled. Before that I had loaned it to friends - decades long PC users - who promptly made me a nice offer for it and who have since bought new Macs from the local Apple Store. They are extremely conservative and frugal folks - but it did not take them long to figure out that one Mac every decade that always works is better than a new PC every three years that frequently "crashes". Macs serve their owners and serve them well. PCs work sometimes and expect their owners to serve and service them.. Who is master and who slave? There is never a doubt with a Mac!
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
The Best!, October 13, 2009
This review is from: Apple MacBook Pro MC226LL/A 17-Inch Laptop (Personal Computers)
Defnitely the best laptop you can buy. It's almost perfect and hats saying a lot considering how great their products are already. They just keep getting better and better, but this machine is so great it will last me a long time before another upgrade. Bravo!
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13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
Brilliant!, December 4, 2009
This review is from: Apple MacBook Pro MC226LL/A 17-Inch Laptop (Personal Computers)
The best and the right decision that I made! I used a friend's mac for couple of hours last month (when he showed off) and immediately realised why MAC was a cut above the rest. When I decided to buy, thought as well should go for the best in the MACBOOK Pro range. I had so many Windows based laptops over the last decade but this I can say is a prized possession! No more crashes, viruses, firewalls, messy uninstalls, painfully slow startups, blue (or black) screens, registry headaches etc.,
After using this, I definitely made a decision not to go back to Windows again. If I did want to use Windows for whatever reason, bootcamp gives the option but not sure why would one want to? After seeing me praise the MAC some of my colleagues have either bought or in the process of buying one. The others who have bought it already say the MAC is 'just awesome!'
If you're reading this with a view to whether you should buy or not, don't waste your time! Just go for it - you won't regret your decision.
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17 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
17 Inch MacBook Pro Compared, January 25, 2010
This review is from: Apple MacBook Pro MC226LL/A 17-Inch Laptop (Personal Computers)
I had a MacBook Pro 13 inch, have owned and liked both the 15 and 17 inch MacBook Pros. I sold the 15 inch machine, because I carry a machine around with me all day long and the smaller 13 inch was a better fit in my backpack and it weighed less. The 17 inch MacBook Pro I used as a desktop and it worked well for me, but I needed more screen real estate, so I bought a Mac Mini and hooked up two older 23 inch Apple cinema displays. So I thought I was good to go, but sadly, a dirty, rotten, no good, son of a you-know-what, swiped my backpack and gone was my trusty MacBook Pro. I had lots of stuff on there that I couldn't afford to lose, but fortunately I'm a crazy nut about backing up. Still, the loss of the machine hurt.
So, now I own a new MacBook, have had it for a couple weeks now, so I believe, having owned all of Apple's current MacBooks and the MacBook Pro, that I'm qualified to comment on and compare them here.
First off, let me admit, I'm not a fan of the glare on Apple's new machines. I spend a lot of time staring at a computer screen and that bright light staring back at me gives me headaches, plus the reflection is distracting. That's why I bought the 17 inch Macbook Pro with a non reflective screen. In many ways it was a dream machine. Fast with a 2.8GHZ processor and 4GB of ram, it's all the desktop most people would ever need, especially if, like me, you get it with a 500 GB hard drive. One big advantage of using this machine as a desktop is that it is portable. If you don't need a laptop on your person 24/7 like I do, you can have your cake and eat it too with this machine. I would have kept this computer forever, had I not needed more screen real estate. I could have added a Cinema display to the machine, but a friend, who is in love with the new glossy Apple screens, sold me his two 23 inch displays for a ridiculously cheap price, so I sold my MacBook Pro on eBay and bought a Mini, which drives the two displays beautifully. Sadly, it's not as fast as the 17 inch Macbook Pro, but sometimes you can't have everything. Apple claims this machine gets eight hours on the battery, but I can't verify that, because as it was on my desk, it was always plugged in.
I was using the 15 inch MacBook Pro as my laptop and this a dream machine. I had the glossy screen changed out to a non reflective one. You can do this without voiding your warranty for a couple C notes by sending your computer off to a company called TechRestore. You can find them online. Sadly, right after I changed the screen out, Apple came out with a non reflective screen for the 15 inch MacBook Pro for only fifty dollars more. I guess I took it in the shorts on that one. However, I will say that my upgrade had a black bezel, whereas the Apple version has a grey one and ascetically, I think the black border around the screen just looks better. I can't think of one bad thing to say about this machine, other than it's smaller sibling is lighter and, of course, smaller. For many, this could be the only compter you need. I had the 2.8GHz version with a 500GB hard drive, which was the mirror of the drive on my 17 inch MacBook Pro. Most people would have been happy with these two machines and looking back, maybe I should have just purchased one of those Cinema displays and saved myself some money, but I didn't.
The fastest 13 inch MacBook Pro runs at 2.53GHz, slower than the MacBook Pro I sold to get it, but the size and weight were the major factors for me. Like with the above 15 inch, I changed out the screen. I also upgraded the hard drive to 500GB and to make it even sweeter, after I got it back with the new screen, I sent it off to MCE in Southern California and had the DVD drive swapped out for a second 500GB harddrive. They not only put the second drive in my MacBook Pro, but they put the DVD drive into a nice little case, so that you can hook it up to your MacBook Pro via USB 2.0. This was my dream laptop. I took it with me everywhere and I can't, absolutely can't recommend this machine highly enough. Then someone stole it.
So now I had that Mac Mini with the two displays, but no laptop. And sadly, I've got a lot less money now, because I'm getting a whole lot less work, because of the downturn. So, this time around I can't afford to trick out my machine to just the way I want it. I had to settle. So I bought the new unibody MacBook. No Firewire and at first I thought I'd be pretty cheesed not having it, but my external harddrives all use USB 2.0 as well and you know, I'm not really missing Firewire at all. Of course I can't use target disk mode, but that's the breaks. Also, I did have to upgrade the memory, come on Apple, everybody who's ever put fingers to a keyboard knows 2GB or ram isn't enough. But I'm living with the 250GB harddrive. The 2.26GHz processor doesn't really seem all that much slower than what I had on the stolen MacBook Pro and I really like the rubberized bottom. I called TechRestore to see if they have an upgrade to a matte screen for these machines yet and they do and I will probably change out the screen, maybe, but maybe not, because I'm finding if I move the computer around a bit and turn down the display, I can almost live with the glossy screen. We'll see.
In conclusion I've got to say, having owned them all, that they are all great and wonderful machines. I hope I'm not sounding like an Apple fan boy, because I'm not. They could have made the machines better, by offering a matte display to those of us who wanted it for no extra money on the 15 and 17 inch one. Also you don't have to be a professional with a lot of money to be bugged by glare, they could have offered a matte display on their two 13 inch models. They could have put 4GB of RAM into the MacBook, but they wanted to keep the price under a thousand dollars. Still, even with those gripes, these are the best laptops out there. Besides, consider the alternative, Windows 7, horror of horrors.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
The Showhorse Workhorse, December 18, 2009
This review is from: Apple MacBook Pro MC226LL/A 17-Inch Laptop (Personal Computers)
For three years now I have been PC free relying on my trusty MacBook Pro for all the heavy lifting. The replacement of my 2.16GHz MBP was long coming. The major problem was that essentially unlike a PC laptop which is functionally useless after two years, Macs can last forever. What doesn't last forever however is AppleCare Protection Plan - For Portable Apple Computers 15 Inches and Above. Even though Macs are extremely reliable, Applecare is a necessary option. All computers, even Apple computers, are mechanical devices and subject to random and expensive repairs.
So hear was my dilemma. I had a perfectly functional three year old MacBook Pro. It had a market value, and I had a buyer. In a month when my Applecare warranty expired repairs were going to be expensive, eating up the value of the computer. Plus the Congress created a 100% business write-off for new computers for 2009, meaning that the government was going to subsidize a new MacBook Pro. So I sold my old laptop and bought this incredibly fast new 17 inch MacBook Pro.
First why 17in? Lots of people prefer 15 inch machines because of weight issues. This 17 inchat a about 6.6 pounds is significantly lighter than my old MBP. A larger screen is more effective for work, particularly when my work requires research and writing. The only option I got is the antiglare screen. It is true that the colors have more pop and sizzle with the shiny standard screen, but I am not a graphic artist. I read and write in black and white and a glare slows me down.
Battery life is another big factor. An 8 hour battery means you can work on transcontinental or even trans-Atlantic flights. Airline power connections are still few and far between in economy.
The 500GB hard drive is far more than I need right now. One option, although an expensive one, is a 256GB solid state drive. There are advantages. Unlike Hard Drives there are no whirling mechanical parts, making it more releiable. But that does not mean a solid state drive canot fail. They can and you will still require Applecare. the best insurance, along with Applecare is a Apple Time Capsule MB765LL/A 1TB which I used to "move" the data,music, photos, videos, applications, and keychain from the older laptop to my new MBP. (Hint: to do this wirelessly takes a while. Figure on seven or eight hours)
So now I have a flashier, larger, lighter version of my old MacBook Pro, soon to be in the loving hands of a new owner. I have no doubt he will be able to use it for several more years. My new MacBook Pro will be with me till the Applecare expires in three years.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
I am so impressed!, January 28, 2010
This review is from: Apple MacBook Pro MC226LL/A 17-Inch Laptop (Personal Computers)
I own an IMAC 24" which I love but I needed a laptop. After debating whether to go with the 17" or the 15", and pay an extra $ 300.00 for a slightly faster computer, I bought from Amazon this stock 17". I saved a bit money by purchasing from Amazon, rather than from Apple. This computer is amazing. The only thing that I don't understand is the card reader - I think I still have to purchase an actual reader - there is only a slot built in. I also purchased the Apple Care 3 year package and again saved money by purchasing from Amazon. The display is high quality, the machine is fast ( I can't see how spending an extra $ 300.00 for the 3.0 ghz could be a noticable improvement), it's light enough to carry, big enough to watch a movie - I think it is worth every penny. This is a 5 star product!
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Apple MacBook Pro, January 27, 2010
This review is from: Apple MacBook Pro MC226LL/A 17-Inch Laptop (Personal Computers)
First Apple computer and I love it. So much better than Microsoft PC's. Highly recommend it. The only concern I have is if the battery ever needs to be changed. There are no local service providers where I live and I would not want to mail it off.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
17' Macbbok Pro, December 27, 2009
This review is from: Apple MacBook Pro MC226LL/A 17-Inch Laptop (Personal Computers)
Love this MacBook the screen is beautiful. You can feel the quality. The Resolution: 1920 x 1200. Its fast 2.8 GHz. Great Battery life. Large HD. Fast internet. Great software!
And $200 cheaper then a refurbished one from Apple.
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