You see them everywhere, most often in hep Bollywood movies and TV advertisements. In fact, the Apple MacBook Pro is almost synonymous onscreen with the word ‘laptop’. So much so, the MacBook Pro was as much Apple as the Apple logo itself, thanks largely due to the minimal design changes in the five years since its launch. It ain’t broke, right?

Broke it wasn’t, but dated it was. No wonder, the recent updates to the MacBook Pro were the subject of intense rumour and hype. And deliver Apple did, with new Pros heavily inspired by the MacBook Air casing and some serious changes internally as well — new graphics chips, a completely new motherboard design, and a radical new trackpad. Worthy successor or monumental let down? We dig past the surface to find out.

Speaking of surface, the big news about the new MacBook Pro (and its smaller, budget- oriented cousin, the MacBook) is about the way these laptops are produced. No more seams, no creaky joints — the MacBook Pro is carved out of a solid block of aluminum using a new process (‘unibody’) that, according to Apple, creates lighter, stronger, more environment-friendly machines.

The result is a thin laptop body that’s as tough as it is advertised. You can really feel the strength of the enclosure when you hammer away on the keyboard, which I should add, is a real pleasure to use with the switch to the MacBook Air-style black ‘chiclet shaped’ keys.

And then there’s the new, glass-coated trackpad that’s about 40 per cent larger than the old one and does away with the mouse button completely. Instead, the button is built into the trackpad itself — just press the trackpad near the front of the laptop. Keeps the lines clean, yet works just fine. And like recent Mac laptops, the trackpad is multi-touch enabled a la the iPhone, and it even allows upto a four finger swipe to perform onscreen actions. Wow.

Then again, with design, one man’s wine…the stunningly bright 15.4-in LED screen sports a shiny, piano black bezel, much like the iMacs. Now I for one don’t care too much for the two-tone look Apple is gunning for with this re-design, but I certainly think a matte option for the screen wouldn’t have hurt. Right now, the only choice you get is glossy, which suffers from glare in brightly-lit places, and is downright sacrilegious for most graphic designers!

Hardware under the hood is much improved, with a new Intel Core 2 Duo processor (you get either a 2.4-GHz or 2.53-GHz chip, and faster internals overall with faster memory and a faster front-side bus — pretty much good to handle anything you throw at it.

And it ships with two graphics Nvidia processors — an integrated chip that is also used in the new MacBook and MacBook Air, and an Nvidia 9600M GT with 256 or 512MB of discrete video RAM. Why two? As it works, the laptop defaults to the integrated chip for longer battery power, but it can be switched to the more powerful 9600M GT if you need more graphics horsepower.

Handy if you have an application which demands the extra juice. It requires you to log out to switch between the two, but that’s due to be fixed in an upcoming update to the operating system. With this model, Apple also made it easier to access some of the internal hardware, should you be so inclined, to upgrade the hard drive or memory.

So it’s all good then? There are trade-offs, such as a loss of battery life. Use it with the discrete graphics card, and you can just about watch a full Bollywood movie on it. Switch to this less power hungry graphics option, and you can eke out another hour or so. Also missing is a Blu-ray drive, which really should have featured at this price point. Oh, and another sore point is Apple adding a mini DisplayPort and then failing to bundle an adapter for conventional DVI along with the accessories. It’s also mildly heavier than previous models.

And its price means it’s meant for the well-heeled (or the corporate expense account), thank you. Not to say this isn’t an awesome laptop — all I’m saying is that for those who don’t need the extra graphics card and bigger screen, the new MacBooks are the chance for many to buy into the premium Pro design, and still glow with pride.

Quick Specs:

• Display: 15.4-in widescreen LED-backlit 1440 x 900 glossy display
• Processor: 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 3MB shared L2 cache, 1066 MHz front-side bus
• Memory: 2GB 1066 MHz DDR3 SDRAM
• Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 9400M integrated graphics, with NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT discrete graphics with 256MB GDDR3 video memory
• Hard Disk: 250GB serial ATA 5400rpm hard drive, with Sudden Motion Sensor
• Optical drive: Slot-load 8X SuperDrive with dual-layer support
• Connectivity: AirPort Extreme 802.11n wireless networking, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, Gigabit Ethernet port, built-in iSight video camera, two USB 2.0 ports, one FireWire 800 port; ExpressCard/34 expansion card slot, 1 audio line-in and 1 audio line-out port, Mini DisplayPort for video output (adapters sold separately)
• Mouse/Keyboard: Glass multi-touch trackpad and illuminated keyboard
• Power: 85 watt MagSafe Power Adapter
• Dimensions (H x W x D): 0.95in x 14.35in x 9.82in
• Weight: 2.49kg
• Rating: 8/10
• Price: Rs 1,19,600 for the 2.4 GHz, 2GB, 256GB hard disk, 256MB graphics option/ Rs 1,49,000 for the 2.53 GHz, 4GB, 320 GB hard disk, 512 MB graphics option
• URL: http://www.apple.co.in/macbookpro/

Power boost

If you’ve cursed the iPhone’s battery life, or have stayed away from the purchase for this very reason, there’s hope. The Power Slider by Incase promises to double your phone’s power for upto 10 hours talk time, increase your audio playback time to 26 hours, and increase your video playback time to seven hours. Not bad for something that manages to maintain the same shape, even if it does fatten the iPhone up quite a bit. Best of all, you can leave the iPhone in it while it charges or syncs, and a 5-LED battery status indicator lets you know just how much juice you have left.

URL: http://goincase.com/products/detail/EC20003/1
Price: Available with dealers

Travel easy

Next time you’re travelling abroad for significant amounts of time, you may want to give the Toshiba G450 a second glance. It is a USB memory stick/alarm clock with snooze/MP3 player/7.2Mbps HSDPA USB modem/tri-band GSM cellphone. And it looks really neat while doing its job. Not only does it work like a mobile broadband modem, it also has a dual rotary-layout keypad on one side, plus a screen to allow it to do double duty as an excellent take-anywhere backup phone. And it can store some data and some music. More for less, eh?

URL: http://www.toshiba-europe.com
Price: $207