Penti - Wednesday, Jlink Only tablet-PCs don't and they are only on IPS-based tech since recently and in smaller sizes, as far as I'm aware of there is no 15" low power laptop panel in existence or being manufactured.If you're unfamiliar with Apple's unibody MacBook Pro and integrated battery design I'd recommend reading our older articles on the topic. Today we're going to find out if the sweetspot got any less sweet as a result of the unusual upgrade. You get GigE, FireWire 800, mini DisplayPort, 2 x USB 2.0, a SD card readerand a shared line in/out port. The 13-inch MBP comes with all the ports the 15-inch model has, minus dedicated line in/out. I'd say that given the usage model for most notebooks, 4GB should be plenty with OS X 10.6. It's still spread out over two DIMMs (making upgrading more expensive than it should be), but it's enough to get you going. On the bright side, Apple finally outfitted the 13-inch MacBook Pro with a sufficient amount of memory: 4GB. While the rest of the MacBook Pro lineup got shiny new Core i5 and i7 processors (dual core + Hyper Threading), the new 13-inch is stuck with an older Core 2 Duo. Keeping up with recent tradition, a NVIDIA GeForce 320M chipset is also under the hoo.err, keyboard. Priced at $1199 you get a 4.5 lbs aluminum unibody chassis, a 13.3" display and a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo CPU. It got a faster GPU and bigger battery, but only a mild CPU bump.
When Apple made its 2010 upgrade public however, the 13-inch model was somewhat neglected. I've praised the 2010 15-inch MacBook Pro as being the one to get thanks to its combination of performance and battery life.
And for portability, that choice often leads you to something a bit larger than a netbook for performance, but small enough to comfortably carry around.įor Apple users this portable sweetspot is the 13-inch MacBook Pro.Īpple's 2010 13-inch (left) vs. Unfortunately having a set of notebooks and mobile devices isn't really an option for most. You may use some more often than others but having the entire set helps. You get a desktop-like screen resolution and mainstream desktop performance. And given how thin the system is, it's also not hard to make an argument for Apple's 17-inch MacBook Pro. Other times you need to do actual work but don't need a ton of CPU horsepower that puts you into 13-inch notebook territory.įor even more productive beings there are larger 15 and 16-inch systems. Sometimes you don't need to do a lot but want to be able to couch around and browse the web on a tablet. There's simply a time and a place for everything. You can make arguments in favor of and against everything from the smartphone and tablet to 17" desktop replacement notebooks. I'm convinced that there's no perfect mobile form factor.