A Review of the Apple MacBook Pro MB134LLA 15.4" Laptop

A Critical Review of the Top of the Line 15.4" MacBook

I review another MacBook professional edition 15.4" notebook. This is part of my series of Apple Notebook reviews that I was prompted to write after noticing consumer trends and high sales of Apple's mobile computers. In this review I'll let you know what you can expect with this notebook as well as who will get the most for their money. Let me start with a few of the basics.

Hardware:

Processor: 2.5 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo

Storage Space: 250GB (Serial ATA) Hard Drive

RAM: 2GB DDR2 SDRAM

Optical Drive: Apple's "Superdrive" which is an all in one CD R/RW integrated with DVD +/- R RW

Dimensions: 9.6" x 14.1" x 1"

Weighing: 5.4 pounds

Display: 15.4" matte LCD

Graphics Accelerator: GeForce 8600M GT with 512 MB of dedicated video RAM

This professional MacBook has a few differences from its less expensive counterpart. It has an increased amount of video ram. It also has a slightly larger hard drive. I'm not sure why Apple didn't upgrade the RAM as well at least to 3GB. If you're interested in this notebook you're almost surely going to expect a little more than a paltry 2GB. In my experience most users that purchase one of these MB134LL/A tend to run a dual boot system with Vista and like having the extra RAM (vista consumes RAM like its jello).

Everything else is on point. The display is crisp and sharp running at a resolution of 1440x990. This is going to be better than most traditional laptop displays you're likely accustomed to. The only thing I don't like about this one that I have is the matte finish to the screen. It is meant to reduce glare however in my opinion it also reduces the screen's ability to adapt to bright lighting conditions. You should make sure before you buy if you want the matte or glossy screen.

At 1" thick and weighing just over 5lbs this is a wonderfully portable notebook for as powerful as it is. It truly is impressive engineering from Apple. I love the materials, the aluminum exterior is great, and runs cool.

Connectivity:

2 FireWire (400 and 800, use this for transferring data between two computers or off of your digital camcorder)