Expert's Rating
Pros
- Classic design
- Lovely screen
- Ample RAM and hard drive capacity
- Fast performance
Cons
- No internal modem option
- No eSATA port
- Performance glitch slows some tasks
- Few cards available for ExpressCard/34 slot
- No PC Card slot
Our Verdict
Like its 15-inch counterparts, the 17-inch MacBook Pro gets a processor bump (up to 2.33GHz from 2.16GHz) as well as a new processor entirely. The Intel Core Duo makes way for the Intel Core 2 Duo, a next-generation chip promising better performance with the same battery life. The amount of shared L2 cache has doubled, as has the installed memory — the 17-inch MacBook Pro ships with 2GB of RAM. (You can install up to 3GB.) Hard drive capacity has increased to 160GB from 120GB.
If you can afford the price and don’t mind the size and weight inevitably associated with such a large display, you won’t be disappointed with the 17-inch MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo — a marvelous machine. It’s worth noting that a performance glitch with ColorSync profiles affects the speed of some tasks, though, in general, this laptop is plenty speedy.