Is it worth upgrading to the new 2011 Macbook Pro?

As I’m sure you know, Apple tends to withhold any news about the updated Mac release to prevent people from waiting for new releases that will halt their quarterly sales – well that’s why, in my opinion. On February 24, Apple announced a major update to the Macbook Pro range, updating processors, graphics cards, HD camera, and Thunderbolt port.

Arguably the biggest improvement is found in the 13-inch model, which previously ran a 2.4GHz duo core 2 processor. This technology is over 4 years old and has been superseded by the new 2.3GHz dual-core Intel i5 / 2.7GHz i7 processors. You may be thinking this doesn’t seem like a big improvement, both are still two-core, but newer processors support a process called Hyper-Threading. This allows a dual-core machine to run two virtual cores to function as a quad-core machine. Four cores running at 2.7GHz is much faster than two running at 2.4GHz, so this is a fantastic upgrade.

The processors in the 15-inch and 17-inch models have also been updated, but not as significantly.

So what will be the performance difference between the new 13-inch and the old 13-inch? Well if you go for a geekbench rating, it has doubled! It’s basically twice as fast and will do tasks in half the time, like rendering a movie or compressing a file. The graphics card has been updated to make gaming and video editing far superior.

Apple has introduced an HD webcam, which can be used for Facetime or Skype. They have given Macs the ability to transfer data between each other via lightning, at speeds of 10GB / s. That’s twice as fast as the new USB 3.0.

You are probably thinking that this is obviously expected in an upgrade, the real question is should you upgrade and buy a new one?

Well, I bought a Macbook Pro 13 at the end of 2010, I am very happy with it. It is powerful and portable enough, however, since I got my hands on the new line, I will have to update it. The ability to transfer data at 10GB / s is puzzling, the updates only make it a brand new machine. You will also make sure you get a machine that you won’t need to update again for at least 2 years.

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