Apple MacBook Pro Fall 2011 user reviews (2.4GHz Core i7, 15-inch)

Pros Good performance, sleek and beautiful.

Cons No Bluray yet? Would love to have the storage capability.

Summary Still no USB 3.0 (forgiven), but cannot be forgiven for the lack of Blu-Ray and HDMI out support.

Pros This is a very beautiful machine. Apple engineers have developed a well built machine.

Cons Besides the insane price there are some big misses. For the premium price I'd expect some premium features like Blu-ray. They don't even have some standard features like USB 3. (yes, having at least 1 USB 3 port is standard at this point).

Summary Others have said that this is great for IT students and I have to disagree. I have to run a majority of my tools on a virtual machine which is a clunky way of doing things. (even when I buy a MAC to get away from Windows I still have to install Windows to run some programs). Trust me, the beauty of the laptop fades over time and you're left realizing you spent $500 too much for a premium laptop that isn't that premium.

Pros Solid, unbeatable construction. Lightning fast. Very attractive. Incredible screen quality. Every aspect of this machine was though out, and designed. Multi-touch trackpad is very intuitive and makes navigating simple and easy. Lion OS is very nice.

Cons So far, I have found very little, if anything I would change.

Summary First of all, I have owned quite a variety of PC's from various manufacturers as well as custom made, including workstation class desktops, and laptops. This is my first Macintosh. I have long been known to bash Apple products, and have been a silly micro$oft sheep for far too long.

My first inclination to switch sides was after seeing how well most of Apples products are built. The fact that they're not made of cheap plastics and are actually designed was key. My intentions were to give them a try and run windows on a MBP. After a lifetime of countless headaches with micro$oft and various PC manufacturers, I decided to give Apple a shot, and planned to evaluate OS X Lion. After a few short hours, I was forever changed.

One great thing about Apple is that they design both the hardware and software. The key word here is design. They actually took the time to engineer things to work together. There aren't 20 million companies throwing together 20 million different machines, in 20 million different ways to work with an operating system. This is, in my opinion, one of the most crucial factors in Apples success with getting it right.

On to the MacBook Pro. I wanted the anti-glare screen, and opted for a few other upgrades. I bought this machine at my local Apple Retail Store, and ended up with a pre-customized 2.5GHZ, Hi-Res / Antiglare, 750GB 7200RPM HDD, 4GB, ATI 6770M 1GB. This is by far the best machine I have ever owned in many ways, which is saying quite a bit.

This computer is built incredibly well, compromising nothing. Its design and construction are far superior to anything else. Battery life is excellent (Anyone expecting to run this machine with optimal settings and achieve 7 hours of battery life, should know better). I was able to run this machine for about 4 to 5 hours while actually working on it. The machine is very responsive, and incredibly fast.

I use it for quite a few demanding tasks including graphic design, automation programming / compiling, as well as music production, and some gaming. Its performance on every one of these tasks exceeded my expectations. It runs all of my Adobe Creative Suite Software with ease, handles compiling without breaking a sweat, and gaming is smooth with maxed out settings 27 - 60 FPS.

As a first time Macintosh OS X user, I am very happy with Lion. I am more of a power user, and was a bit nervous about it being too user friendly, etc. but was impressed with the overall setup of the OS. I really can't say enough about this machine, it has really impressed me in every way possible. I really love the multi-touch trackpad, and all of its integrations into the OS.

Many people are complaining about the lack of USB 3.0, most of which don't even own this machine, but I see far more advantages to the Thunderbolt Port. I plan on using the MacBook Pro with an Apple Thunderbolt display, and also connecting a Thunderbolt HDD for large data storage and backup. Although I don't own them yet, I will update this with my findings on the Thunderbolt ports performance once I have some time invested in using them.

There are too many things that I love to list here, and I may add more as I find them, but in short, I am done with micro$oft products and am a happy and proud Macintosh owner / user.

It is somewhat funny that I keep reading reviews of this product written by people who don't even own the product in which they are reviewing. How can you write a review for something you haven't owned, or only used a handful of times? It seems a lot of people also complain about the price, again most of which don't own the product. If you feel its too expensive, buy something else and review it instead.This was an expensive investment at $2,649.00 but I feel that its well worth it, my money was well spent, and I got exactly what I paid for. I have spent just as much money on widows based machines that may have had slightly better specs, but none of them even come close when it actually comes down to performance and overall satisfaction!

Pros Best trackpad ever
Awesome Air vent
Best OS
Good Sound
Best Keyboard
Long Lasting Battery hour

Cons Only two usb 2.0 ports very near which makes some pendrives/dongles impossible to use at same time