Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #1213 in Personal Computers
- Brand: Apple
- Model: MC371LL/A
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.82" h x
.95" w x
14.35" l,
5.51 pounds
- CPU: Intel Core i5 2.4 GHz
- Memory: 4GB SODIMM
- Hard Disk: 320GB
- Graphics: GeForce GT 330M 256MB
- Processors: 2
- Native resolution: 1440 x 900
- Display size: 15.4
Features
- Intel Core i5 Processor 2.4GHz
- 4GB SDRAM RAM
- 320GB 5400RPM Hard Drive
- 15.4-Inch Screen, Intel HD Graphics and NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M
- Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard Operating System
Apple MacBook Pro MC371LL/A 15.4-Inch Laptop (OLD VERSION)
Product Description
The new MacBook Pro 15-inch models set all-new benchmarks for Mac notebooks. The 15-inch MacBook Pro feature Intel Core i5 processors, which boost performance up to 50 percent(1) and reach Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.33GHz. Next-generation NVIDIA graphics bring high performance to everything from 3D games to photos and videos. And the built-in battery lasts up to 10 hours (8 to 9 hours on the 15-inch models).(2) (1) Up to 50 percent faster compared with previous-generation MacBook Pro. (2) Testing conducted by Apple in March 2010 using preproduction 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo–based 13-inch MacBook Pro, 2.66GHz Intel Core i7–based 15-inch MacBook Pro, and 2.53GHz Intel Core i5–based 17-inch MacBook Pro. Battery life depends on configuration and use. See www.apple.com/batteries for more information. The wireless productivity test measures battery life by wirelessly browsing various websites and editing text in a word processing document with display brightness set to 50%.
Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
126 of 131 people found the following review helpful.
Love the matte screen option. Great computer. Time will tell if its worth the $$
By BBbeans
After having a 3 year-old Dell die on me (to be fair it was put through multiple trips to and from school in my bag, sometimes while it was still on) and a Toshiba Satellite fail after a year, I was tired of paying bargain prices and receiving a frustrating experience to go with it.My girlfriend had talked about buying a Mac and I always balked at them as being too expensive. Well, most of the main problems with my old laptops were compatibility issues between hardware and software, often involving frustrating searches for new drivers. Knowing that Apple makes the hardware and develops the software for their computers made me think they would be able to integrate the two aspect better than PC's I have used. I still have nightmares about all the drivers I had to hunt down when I downgraded my Toshiba from Windows Vista to XP.I had actually purchased a 13" Macbook Pro with a glossy screen from Amazon a few days before Apple did their big upgrade in April 2010. It was a beautiful looking machine and was easy to use after I became accustomed to the differences from a PC, ie; What is the "Finder"? However, the 13" screen was a little small for me. I do some photography work, and I watch movies on it as well so I decided the 15" Macbook Pro would be the way to go. Once they did their upgrade for all their machines I decided to buy directly from Apple.I debated long and hard on the glossy vs. matte option. Going with the high-res screen (1680 X 1050 as opposed to standard 1440 X 900) was a no-brainer. After doing some online research I also chose the matte option (as opposed to the default glossy screen). I had never actually seen a matte screen as the local Best-Buy didn't have one in stock. I was a little nervous on my decision, but I called Apple tech support and easily arranged for a return on my not-yet-arrived 15" Macbook Pro should I want one with a glossy screen instead. The person I spoke with even arranged for return shipping labels paid for by Apple! I didn't upgrade the harddrive or RAM because I can do those myself, or have them done later, for a lot cheaper than Apple's pricing.The new 15" w/ the matte screen came and I opened up some high-res You-tube videos and compared it side-by-side to the glossy. This was the middle of the day and the lone window in our living room was creating all sorts of reflections on the glossy screen while the matte was unphased. Sure the blacks on the glossy were a deeper and the colors might have "popped" a little more, but knowing I would be using my laptop in a room lit by daylight or with a bright light, the henious reflections on the glossy screen definitely made it a no-go for me. This was a window that was in front of the computer and wasn't even directly shining on the screen. I was really happy I decided to go matte.That being said, I have loaded up Photoshop CS5 and it runs great. Way faster than my old laptop. I appreciate a lot of the little touches that Apple puts into their products that are becoming more and more noticable every day I use it. (Such as their search feature is always available with 1 click from the desktop) I plan to buy an Applecare plan towards the end of my one-year warranty period to make sure this lasts me at least 3 years. Hopefully I might be able to keep this for 4 or 5 years.Overall, if you have the $$ I highly recommend this product.Pros- - Unibody design is super-sturdy and slim. - Love the matte screen - The high resolution upgrade helps with multi-tasking, programming, photo-editing, web-browing, ect.. - Super-fast w/Photoshop - Good side-to-side viewing angle, (better than the screen on the Windows-based laptops I have used) - Keyboard is very pleasant to use - Speakers are adequate - Touchpad is awesome! Large and easy to use with 2, 3, and 4 finger controls not found anywhere else but on a Mac. I rarely use a mouse anymore, which works well for using it on my lap. - Quick boot up time. Opening and closing the lid for "sleep mode" waiting time is basically zero. - Good battery lifeCons - Expensive (duh) - Can get hot on the underneath towards the back where the processor is located. - Up and down viewing angle not so good (this is common w/laptops though) - Some software not available for Mac - USB 2.0 (instead of newer 3.0) - Glowing Apple logo on the back of the screen is a bit of advertising I could do without. - Sharp Edges on front (can apparently be filed down but I am wary about doing this) - No Blu-Ray driveUpdate: Maybe it is just me, but my Apple seems to have more issues with Flash and streaming internet content than I have ever had with a PC. I know Apple is at war with Adobe and has gone to great lengths to disparage the Flash format. They do not seem to have worked too hard to ensure that Flash content works flawlessly with their machines. Streaming videos will stop or fail to load alltogether. This doesn't happen often, but with a PC I never had any issues like this at all.Update x2 (8/30/10) So my power supply had been giving me intermittent issues (every couple of days the power would come on and go off every couple of seconds for no reason). I called Apple support and they recommended just using the shortened version (the power supply is customizable to be either longer with an additional cord, or not), and then to call them back if the problem continued. The guy I talked to thought the cord that lengthens the setup might be the issue. Well I wasn't have any more problems for a while.... Then yesterday (the day before I started a new job teaching at a university) the power supply quits working completely. I call Apple and they say contact the authorized Apple service providers in my area (neither of which were open that day since it was Sunday). The next day, Monday, I called the 2 authorized service providers in my area, one of which says I need to leave my computer there overnight for testing to determine if I am eligible for a new power supply, and the other which couldn't handle my problem when I was available to come. Now I try to contact Apple support and all day I have been getting the most ridiculous message that says "At this moment, the customer support team is not available for your support due to unavoidable reasons.. Sorry for the inconvenience caused.." I suppose it is impossible for Apple to properly staff their service center, so not being available was of course, unavoidable. So I am stuck with a bogus power cord for now.Update x3 (9/2/10) I decided to choose the option where I call Apple about my problem, instead of them calling me. That worked much better. I received my replacement power cord in the mail today, a Thursday, after my power supply originally quit working altogether on Sunday. I have to send back the old one, which has actually started to work intermittently now. If Apple deems that I replaced a non-broken power supply they are going to charge me $80. We'll see...
117 of 124 people found the following review helpful.Video Review: MacBook Pro i5/i7 - Hopefully this video will help
By D. Bowman
Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R3QEN8N7TXJS09 I hope this video helps you make up your mind.You will not regret buying this machine.
65 of 67 people found the following review helpful.
Just as robust as my 13" with a few caveats.
By M.D.C.
For summary skip to the bottom. Video to come soon...I already wrote a review and posted a video on the 13", so I'll spare you the pre-story. The 15" MacBook Pro (Summer 2010 version) is a step up for me. I want to go on record by saying that I did NOT opt for the high res screen, and I'll tell you why in a moment. I'm still an MCSA and an MCTS, and Microsoft is still primary in my world, but I access these resources via Apple.First, I want to clarify why I chose to buy the 15" when I had a 13" that was sufficient. Because I run VMs a lot (I have reviews of Parallels and VMWare), the real estate of the screen was very important. The 13" handled everything I threw at it like a champ, but I needed more screen area. I also needed a stronger multitask processor to keep up with the demands I put upon it. The 2010 version of the MacBooks achieve gains in three key areas: The processor, which on the 15" and 17" models is the Core i5 and i7 models; the video cards, which again, on the 15" and 17" models are improved with newer technology; and the power management.The previous processor was the Core 2 Duo - an older technology but not a slouch by any means. It was and is a very powerful processor, all things considered, and the 13" was able to deal with everything I threw at it, including multiple VMs at the same time and video encoding processes. Where the Core 2 Duo struggles is with multi-tasking speed; while it can handle multiple processes, it allocates resources towards the most intensive of what's running at the detriment of everything else. In other words, if you encode a video at a medium resolution, you would find that the machine was nearly unusable otherwise; not frozen or dirt slow, but slow enough to be annoying. The fan would come on and the heat would multiply, and you often would fear for the poor MacBook's life. Not so with the i5. It also does get hot - hotter, in fact, than the Core 2 Duo - but even though it's dealing with intensive processes, it never breaks stride with other applications that might be running. You could encode video, then jump over to your email and work as if nothing were going on. The laptop's fan would be going nearly full blast and the heat would be expunged at an exponential rate, but the laptop would not slow down. I consider that impressive, especially given the fact that battery life did not suffer from older years. The i7 is even more powerful than the i5; but the primary reason I could not consider that version has to do with the heat. It's so extreme it's got people online worried about cooking eggs. I know they're not exaggerating; the i5 can get quite hot, so if the i7 is as strong as I know it is, I can only imagine how hot it must get.The video cards have been improved in the new MacBooks. They are newer versions of the NVidia cards that were released, and some of the MacBooks have the higher end Intel integrated chips. If you don't understand some of the video card technology, there are dedicated video cards and then there are integrated cards. The dedicated cards mean simply that they have their own memory and don't share the RAM of the computer. Integrated, as evident by the name, uses shared RAM to function, either in whole or in part. The integrated chips are lower cost, obviously, at the trade of a performance hit - the RAM it's sharing is inaccessible to the OS and applications, and because the RAM is always a chunk of other RAM, there is an effective tug-of-war going on when using the integrated card. It's really popular in lower end laptops because of the price point - if you paid less than $700 for your laptop chances are it's got an integrated card. All of the lower priced 13" Apples (MacBook, $1199 MacBook Pro, MacBook Air) have integrated chips. The Air might have gotten bumped to NVidia, not sure. In any case, Apple has mixed some models with integrated and dedicated chips, so that less intense processes use the integrated and higher processes switch automatically to dedicated, which is more powerful. Most casual users will think this a pointless feature; but it's good to have for battery life.Speaking of which, the new MacBooks feature a newer version of the MagSafe power adapter. Due to fraying and melting issues with the previous models, Apple has seen fit to redesign this adapter to address the issue. It now holds a lot more solidly than before, and is partially cylindrical instead of rectangular (you can see images above, of course). The cylinder part is where the fraying most commonly occurred, so it makes sense why they did this change. The actual cable itself also feels more solid; kudos to Apple for improving this. It's also retroactively compatible, so if you buy a new adapter you'll probably get the newer version, and it should work fine for your model (assuming it's a MagSafe version and not the plug-in style from old times). The new 13" MacBook Pro claims a battery life of up to 10 hours due in part to the newer video card; the 15" that I'm reviewing here has already shown improved battery life over the older 13", even at maximum screen brightness. The usual activities will of course kill the battery: VMs, video encoding, audio recording, anything where there is a constant stream of data going one way or the other, basically.One area of disappointment coming from the 13": The speakers. Because the 15" sports actual speaker grills instead of the embedded speaker of the 13", I somewhat expected at least slightly better audio quality. To my surprise and dismay, I did not receive it. I do a lot of audio records of songs and I use Sennheiser HD-280 Professional Headphones...but the problem is, a song can sound perfect in the headphones, but then I listen to it on the MacBook's speakers and the same song sounds absolutely terrible. I know it can't be the song that's bad, because the headphones are spot on with the way it should sound; but the MacBook's speakers just separate sound streams too much. It's hard to describe, but it's like the treble is cranked and I can't adjust with an equalizer or something. Movies are fine, but again, no appreciable improvement over the 13", where I would watch DVDs frequently with great effect.So...do I recommend it? Well...it depends. I don't recommend it if you're just a casual user, even if you like the larger screen. Go for the 13" and if you absolutely have to have screens of a larger size get an external. I just can't justify the $300 premium for a larger MacBook unless you are actually going to use it for gaming, audio/video, or VMs. Then it makes sense. As far as the high resolution 1680 screen, recommended only if you're gaming, really. I would like to emphasize DO NOT get the antiglare from Apple. It's nice looking, it really is. It will shock you; it will tempt you; it will compel you to fork over the extra $50. Don't do it; the quality of that screen is not as good as the glossy, because the antiglare is not the full glass. Get one of the Green Onions Supply Anti-Glare AG2 Screen Protector for 15-Inch Aluminum Unibody Apple MacBook Pro and do it yourself. You'll thank me later.
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