Reviewing Apple’s high-end 17-inch MacBook Pro (core 2 duo), CNET gives it 7.4 out of 10 rating (very good) and writes, “The 13.3-inch Apple MacBook and 15.4-inch MacBook Pro, both featuring Intel Core 2 Duo processors, impressed us by mixing Apple’s lauded industrial design and user-friendly operating system with the kind of high-end hardware usually seen only on the PC side–not to mention the ability to run Windows XP through Boot Camp. The high-end 17-inch MacBook Pro adds some hard drive space and screen real estate over the 15-inch MacBook Pro, boosting the base price by $300. The $2,799 system (our $3,374 review unit was tricked out with extra RAM) is very light for a 17-inch laptop, and it’s a good choice for anyone needing an easily transportable big-screen laptop, although most users will be just as happy with the excellent 15-inch version.

While the Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro significantly outperforms the older Core Duo version, the performance of the 15- and 17-inch Core 2 Duo models was essentially identical–which is to be expected, as they share identical processors, RAM, and hard drives (although the default configurations call for a smaller hard drive in the 15-inch model). We did see a significant boost over the non-Pro version of the MacBook, which includes a slower 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo CPU, in both the Photoshop CS2 and the iTunes encoding tests. As with any current Core 2 Duo laptop, the MacBook Pro is more than powerful enough for running productivity and multimedia applications and tackling basic photo and video editing, as well.

The ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 GPU, the same one found in the previous generation of Core Duo MacBook Pros, isn’t going to make this a blazingly fast gaming laptop, but in Quake 4 running at a resolution of 1,280×1,024, we got a very playable frame rate of 32.8fps. Gaming is not the first thing that springs to mind when one thinks of Macs, but thanks to Boot Camp, the utility that allows users to run a partitioned installation of Windows XP on their Intel Macs, you’ll be able to play many popular PC games on this hardware.

In our DVD battery-drain test, we got 3 hours, 2 minutes of battery life from the MacBook Pro. Three hours for a laptop with a 17-inch screen is excellent, especially since the battery is not an extended model that sticks out from the back of the system. The battery is larger, however, than the 15-inch MacBook Pro’s, which explains why both systems had nearly identical battery life even though the 17-inch model has a larger display to power.

The good: Lightest 17-inch laptop we’ve seen; has a built-in Webcam and a remote control; can run Windows XP via Boot Camp; adds FireWire 800 support.

The bad: Lacks media card reader; comes with only 90 days of toll-free technical support.

The bottom line: Apple’s Core 2 Duo 17-inch MacBook Pro is especially thin and light for a desktop replacement, making it an attractive choice for multimedia users on the go. ”

Reviewed unit quick specs:

Apple MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo (17-inch 2.33GHz Intel Core 2 Duo)
OS X 10.4.8; Core 2 Duo 2.3GHz; 3GB DDR2 SDRAM 667MHz; ATI Mobility Radeon x1600 256MB; 160GB Hitachi HTS541616J9SA00 5,400rpm

Read more reviews of the Apple MacBook Pro notebooks

This entry was posted on January 28, 2007 and is filed under Apple.