Apple’s Core2 Duo notebooks: Do you wait?
Apple, on Tuesday, announced the first Core2 Duo powered notebooks in their all Intel powered lineup. The Macbook Pro’s Intel chip is the same chip used in Apple’s popular iMac and the same architecture that powers the Mac Pro’s dual Xeon chips. Apple’s Macbook and Mac mini computers are still powered by the dual core Yonah chip and have not been graced with Core2 goodness.
What’s so great about the new Core2 Architecture? For that question I suggest visiting the core2duo.org page for more technical details on the architecture. What does this mean to the user? More speed comes to mind, better power efficiency and of course bragging rights. There’s no sticker on the new Macbook Pros signifying, “Intel Core2Duo inside� so more speed is about the only thing you do get out of the new chips. From a personal standpoint, my work machine is a Dell Dimension 9200 with the Intel Conroe E6700 processor. This is a dual core chip with 4 megabytes of cache with a clock speed of 2.67GHz and boy is it fast! Core2 chips are extremely efficient processors and this Dell running 500Mhz slower than my previous Pentium D 3.2Ghz (also a dual core) is easily 30% faster.
Moving on to our original question, should you buy the new Core2 based Macbook Pros? I say yes for more than one reason. Let’s say that Apple speed bumped the Macbook Pros with its current Yonah chips. I would still recommend buying this release of the Macbook Pro because Apple would have resolved many hardware issues from the first revision. Since Apple did perform enhancements like better graphic card options, larger hard drive, faster DVD burning Superdrive and larger amount of maximum ram in addition to the Core2 mobile chip, there’s no reason why you should wait if you are in the market for a professional notebook from Apple.
Apple has not made any modifications to the body of these devices and has not added a new wireless networking protocol to succeed Airport Extreme, improved iSight or claims that these notebooks run cooler and more efficiently than previous generation Macbook Pros. This is definitely a new beast underneath with the features I listed above and at least there is finally a great separation between the Macbok and Macbook Pro notebook offerings from Apple. I’m sure there are thousands of users still waiting for a Core2 Duo powered Macbook (I’m one of them) but with the holiday season just around the corner, it appears that Apple won’t release an update to their Macbook model until 2007.
Apple current product line is perfect. A high end Xeon based server and workstation, Core2 Duo powered Desktop and professional notebook and at the low end, a $599 dollar CoreDuo Mac mini and consumer level CoreDuo notebook priced at $1099 all from one company and all of these systems can run Windows or Mac and are all Vista and Leopard capable. I would like to see a price drop in the Macbook Pro models but I think 1� thin makes that $1999 entry-level price tag oh so worth it.
