I'm not really a review geek, but as I've been interested in the performance of this model (as are others) and since I already own a MBP 2G and a 20" iMac, I figured I'd just give you peeps a quick first impression.
I got my hands on a 17" MBP last night. I should have written this fresh last evening, but I was dead tired. Anyway, here's what I recall:
Config was 2G RAM, 120GB HD. I had an opportunity to do a few things with it. This was a social setting and an iPod swap, so I didn't really have an opportunity to run everything through it's paces.
As it wasn't my machine, I didn't have a copy of anything graphic/CPU intensive (like a nice nasty PPC photoshop session) to install and really give it a beating, however I put a copy of xxx on it and did a DVD conversion while also on Safari, with iTunes open and using iSquint to convert the video output of a recent surf session to H.264 for iPod.
I had it side-by-side with my old G4 17" (did not have my 2G MBP with me at the time, so this review is a bit slanted and it's not fair for me to try and "remember" last night's thoughts and compare now with my current MBP except in a few instances (and hey, I'd been drinking).
It connected via the home ethernet seemlessly, instantly and connection speeds were on par with every other machine running in the house.
I found the screen res and overall appearance to be much better than my G4 17."
Encoding FPS versus what I get for my 20" iMac were on par - with all apps running as outlined above.
I tested all the standard iLife apps, everything was snappy off the dock and worked well.
Speaker sound was superior to my G4.
No sticky keys. When prompted, paired with a wireless mouse with no issues.
Heat? What heat. My G4 was hotter just sitting there. I picked them both up a few times and did the lap test. The total time both were running (both idle and testing) was about 2 hours. Both machines were on a wooden kitchen table. Home temp was around 62 degrees give or take.
Battery life was not tested, as we were plugged in.
Whine? Silent as a Church mouse. Typical drive noise when inserting a DVD, but nothing abnormal. I honestly could not hear the fans or drives at all. My G4 is pretty silent and the MBP was no different.
Overall quality? It seems better constructed than my current MBP, but that comment might be skewed as I was just happy to play around with it. But I did open and close the screen, walked around with it a bit, and it seems more "solid" than my current MBP.
Not sure what else anyone wants to know.
