Week 23 MBP 15" Report

I just received my MBP 15" today (7/12/06). It was ordered on 7/6/06. I thought I would give my initial first impressions for anybody who's considering buying one.

Specifications:

MacBook Pro 2.16 Ghz (Week 23)
100 GB, 7200 RPM Hard Disk
1 Gigabyte RAM (2 x 512)

First Impressions:

I did a whole lot of reading on this forum before I made my purchase, so I knew what to expect from day 1. Thankfully I think that I ended up in a better situation than some of you (sorry btw).

The build quality of my MBP seems very good. I did a full out inspection of the outer case, keyboard, and display before turning it on. There weren't any loose joints, bad keys, etc. When the lid is closed it lays nearly flat. There is just the tiniest gap between the left side of the display and the palm rest, but nothing that I'm fretting over.

Upon booting up, the first thing that I checked was Airport connectivity. I own a Linksys WRT54G router that is running with a modified firmware (DD-WRT (v23SP1). Airport connected just fine with no problems. Full signal strength and no apparent dropouts.

Next thing I checked was the iSight and it seems to work just fine.

Next I cranked up two Terminal windows and ran "yes > /dev/null" in both of them with an instance of CoreDuoTemp running. Now the highest reading I got (under power) was 83C after several minutes on a flat table surface. This seems pretty hot, but the case was just warm to the touch on the bottom and top (on left speaker and above F keys). It was nothing that I was alarmed about. I could put my hand behind the vent and feel warm air blowing out so that was comforting. Immediately upon quitting Terminal, the temperature dropped back down to about 45C. So it seems to me that it's idle temperature is pretty low and will certainly be okay in my lap when i'm surfing the web or writing emails.

So then it was time to check out the infamous whine and so of course when I disconnect the power, it starts to whine ever so slightly. Honestly, after reading the forums I was expecting far worse. The whine is pretty faint and you really do need to be in a silent room to hear it. So I figure I'll live with it. It is a little discouraging, but certainly not worth a call to AppleCare in my instance. Maybe I'll just call on behalf of everybody else who is miserable.

The screen is bright as heck and the backlight is even across the whole screen. The display really is pretty.

The speakers sound alright. At max volume they begin to sound a little rough around the edges, but at full volume it's actually pretty loud (I'm coming from an iBook and they don't get very loud).

So all in all I'm pretty happy with what I got. I sympathize for those of you who weren't quite as lucky, but be patient and hang in there. I'm sure Apple will make things right for you in the end. Sorry for the long post, but I really just wanted everybody to know that I think the build quality is starting to get better. We just need to be patient.