New MacBook Pro Is Incoming…..

Stock Photo From Apple.com

Back in March of 2011, I made my first jump into the world of Apple personal computing and purchased a MacBook Pro.  Like every other Apple product I’ve purchased before and since (iPhone, iPad, Apple TV…) I was hooked!  Now I’ve designed my personal computing around the MacBook Pro, having purchased both the Thunderbolt Display and the Promise Pegasus NAS drive as peripherals which negate the need for me to run a traditional laptop and desktop hardware set up – the MacBook Pro is my single workstation.  So my logic here (stay with me folks) is that since I’m not buying both a laptop and a desktop, I’m “saving money” and can “afford” to keep up with the latest hardware upgrades on the MacBook Pro.  It’s logic….I didn’t say it was particularly sound logic….  In any event, here are the specs of the model I’ve ordered:

15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display

• 2.6GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7
• 16GB 1600MHz DDR3L SDRAM
• 512GB Flash Storage
• Apple Thunderbolt to Enet Adpt

So what am I getting for my roughly three grand?  Well, the battery life is said to be much improved – about 7 hours on a single charge, which is incredible if true.  I new processor should be a bit faster, and I’m doubling the system memory which should help too.  The new Retina display MacBooks also have a separate graphics card which should help make photo and video processing much better.  It’s lighter (by about one pound) and thinner which is a good thing.

You’ll see I ordered the Thunderbolt to Ethernet adapter – it’s something I recommend anyone do who orders this laptop.  In my case, I’ve got a Gigabit Ethernet NAS I still use for backup, but there’s also the fact that many hotels still only offer wired Ethernet access to the Internet.  And in cases where both Ethernet and wireless are offered, the wired service will always be faster.

I’ll report back in two weeks once I have it.  🙂