New MacBook Pro

I got myself a new MacBook Pro this week. (OK, technically not a *new* one, but a refurb.) It’s the 13″ mid-2012 model described here. My previous MacBook was purchased in 2007, so I was definitely due for a new one. I had done a few upgrades on the old MacBook, so the basic specs are pretty much the same — 4 GB of RAM and a 500 GB hard drive. The processor is, of course, newer, and hopefully better (i5 vs Core 2 Duo).

I set it up last night, transferring files from my old MacBook via FireWire. I used the migration capability built into the initial setup program. I’ve used this before, and it always seems to work well. It took about four hours to complete.

The old MacBook was on 10.7, since it’s not upgradeable to 10.8. (The new MBP is, of course, on 10.8.) So, this is also my first experience using OS X 10.8. There’s not much new in it, compared to 10.7, from what I’ve seen so far, so I’m not having any trouble there.

Overall, there really isn’t much difference between this new machine and the old one.The keyboard layout is pretty much the same, so it’s nice not having to get used to a new layout for once. And the general form factor and weight are very similar to the old MacBook.

So far, It doesn’t appear to be noticably faster than the old one, which is a bit disappointing, though I didn’t really expect much in that area. I don’t think I really do much to stress the processor.

I don’t really like the direction Apple is going in, with respect to upgradability, but the basic MacBook Pro is still reasonably upgradeable, per iFixit. So, a year from now, if I want to upgrade it to 8 GB of RAM and maybe replace the hard drive with a bigger one or an SSD, I can probably do that.

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