My unibody Macbook Pro core2 2.4 is now sleeping with the fishes due to an unfortunate accident. It felt like I’d only just bought it. At the Apple Store I just grabbed the middle of the range 2.53 Ghz model and expected it to be much the same as the old 2.4. I obviously havent been paying attention in geek class…
The new core i5 model absolutely outclasses the old 2.4 Ghz core2. You feel it immediately. I really didn’t expect that. Everything is snappier. Aperture is noticeably better. My Ruby on Rails apps boot faster. It’s a remarkable improvement over the old model. The performance of the core i5 is nothing short of amazing to me. I’d thought the old 2.4 core2 was very fast indeed and couldn’t imagine I’d need anything faster. How wrong I was.
Thanks to HyperThreading the Activity Monitor utility now shows 4 cores. In a notebook! Thats hardcore geek porn.
Migrating to the new box was a snip. I didnt bother removing the case and swapping the drives over. I just plugged the old one in and the Apple installer ported everything over for me. Documents, Applications, settings, everything. It took about four hours and ran unattended overnight. Aperture was the only app with a minor problem. You have to reconnect all the images back up as the internal Aperture database references the original drive ID and not a standard path name as you’d expect.
Had I realised in advance that the new Macbook Pros used the core i5 processor I’d have been tempted to get the top of the range core i7. Once you taste the surprising enjoyment of this much performance in a laptop you just want more.
