What’s new with the 17” Macbook Pro?
There is not a lot new at MacWorld this year, but there are some incremental enhancements on offer. One of those is an upgraded 17” MacBook Pro with a bit more bang for the buck.
It is probably worth noting that the 17” Pro was the only real hardware announcement in the MacWorld keynote address. This year’s address was handled by Phil Schiller, Apple senior VP for worldwide product marketing, in the now-famous absence of Steve Jobs. Previous years have seen some very impressive hardware introduced during the keynote, so this year’s opener would be easy to see as a bit of a yawner. Many analysts on the Apple scene had predicted exactly this when it was announced that Jobs would not be giving this year’s keynote.
Still, the changes to the big MacBook Pro are impressive. The 17” version was not upgraded with the standard MacBooks and the 15” Pro model in October, so it was expected that the larger model Pro would be debuted at MacWorld, according to Information Week. The same basic case design changes as were made in the 15” model now apply to the 17” MacBook, giving it a slightly sleeker look.
The biggest improvement is probably longer battery life. The new battery for the 17” MacBook Pro will run the system for eight hours on a single charge, and will take as many as 1,000 charges. That means that even if used that way every day, the battery could last up to five years before it started to degrade. Similar batteries were introduced by Dell and HP last year, but this is the first use of such an energy system by Apple. It is not too hard to imagine its use spreading quickly to the rest of the MacBook lineup.
The 17” model also got an upgraded processor, although not the quad-core Intel that was often mentioned in the rumor mill. Instead, the new standard processor is a 2.66-GHz Core 2 Duo processor with 6 MB of on-chip L2 cache, upgradable to a 2.93-GHz Core 2 Duo processor. The big Macbook Pro is also available with up to 8 GB of memory and up to a 320 GB hard drive. It has three USB ports and a single Firewire 800 port. Prices start at $2,799. The new model will be available for purchase in late January.
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