Performance
This laptop is quite powerful: it came with 2GB of RAM (upgraded to 4GB), a 250GB 5400RPM hard drive (upgraded to a 7200RPM 320GB one), a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, and 2, count them 2, video cards: the nVidia GeForce 9400M and 9600M with 256MB of memory. You need to log out to switch between the video cards, but you notice the difference immediately. The 9400M is much less of a battery hog, but using the 9600M, I could easily play SPORE (the only game I have in OS X) on its highest settings, with a minimal amount of lag/jumpiness in the graphics.And now for the graphs:
I’m sure many of you are surprised at some of the results. This was run on an early-2006 MacBook Pro and a late-2008 MacBook Pro, but the difference doesn’t seem all that large. Specifically, the 2006 MacBook Pro did better on the disk test. But this test was performed several times on a cold startup on each machine. SPORE definitely feels a lot faster on this machine, which makes me question the graphics results, and considering the higher speed of this hard drive, I’m also surprised at that. Regardless, those are the raw stats. Interpret them as you like.
The battery is much better than in the older MacBook Pro, as well. Apple says you should get 5 hours using the 9400M video card, and 4 hours using the 9600M, but I’d take about an hour off of each of those estimates. My older MacBook Pro probably got about 2 and a half hours on a new battery, and quickly degraded. No word on how long this battery will last yet.