[RyanN]

I must admit, I'm a Apple guy now. Last month I bought a 15" Macbook Pro for about $2600 and got the 3 year warranty ($250?) and a free 8GB iPod Touch and a free printer. I installed Vista on this laptop, as that is what my college prefers, and strangely enough, what I also prefer. I found Vista to be a lot faster than my 3 year old Dell laptop, but that can be expected. What was not to be expected is another friend on Fusion got a huge gaming laptop that was not as fast as the MacBook Pro, but about the same price and much larger. I came up with this conclusion by using the Windows Experience Index.

Processor: 5.4
Memory (RAM): 5.1 <-Lowest one, therefore, my score
Graphics (Windows): 5.9
Graphics (Gaming: 5.4
Hard Drive: 5.3

From Windows Help: "The base scores currently range from 1 to 5.9."

So you can see that it is a very good computer, and an excellent notebook.

My specs:
2.5Ghz Core 2 Duo 6MB L2 Cache
4GB RAM (32 bit Windows sees 4GB, only uses 3GB, lends spare GB to graphics)
200GB Hard Drive @ 7200RPM
Nvidia GeForce 8600M GT w/ 512MB Dedicated, 1270MB Shared
Screen Resolution 1440x900
802.11N Wireless
Bluetooth
Gigabit Ethernet


I guess that pretty much covers the specs.

My only complaint is the heat this thing makes. Apple runs the fans at a very low setting, even lower in resource hog Vista according to things I've read. It become unbearable to use on my lap running Windows unless I set the fan to high before I run windows. I use SMC Fan Control, which works great.

PS: I use my MacBook Pro for gaming as well. I can pull about 100fps on a regular Half Life 2 Deathmatch map with all settings at high, same with Portal and Garry's Mod. Of course, on more complicated maps the fps drops, but not to an unplayable level.