Apple releases new range of MacBook Pros!

Finally, the long awaited MacBook Pros have been released. The new range sports a Core i5 and i7 configuration in the larger 15 and 17 inch models. The standard configuration of the 13 inch however still features the old Core 2 Duo and now 4GB of RAM. Pricing starts at £999.99 for the 4GB Core 2 Duo and the battery life has gone up to 10 hours from 8 on the 13 inch model. I must say that I am getting more impressed by the MacBook Pro range every release now and I'm edging towards actually liking these notebooks. Anyway, the 250GB hard drive is now standard but 500GB comes at £120 more which is actually a rather good deal considering. Solid state options have also increased in capacity and decreased in price here. However, as with all Apple products, you pay such a high premium to get their devices that consider premium goods. They all still feature the same connections (FireWire 800, USB2.0 x2/3, SD card reader, miniDisplayPort, Ethernet and that terrible combi-port that combines a microphone and headphone jack. The resolutions are just the same; 1280 * 800, 1440 *900, 1920 * 1200. Now the really good feature is the graphics card. The nVidia 330M is now included but what makes it really cool is that Apple has developed a smart system which switches graphics cards (only in the i5 and i7 configurations) between the built in graphics included in the 15 or i7 and the 330M which will result in a significantly longer battery life (as the integrated Intel graphics use less power than the 330M). The 13 inch features the 320M with up to 256MB dedicated graphics. Nothing else appears to have changed drastically.