MacBook Pro 15″ Core Duo 1.83Ghz Review (2006 Model)
I bought this on eBay in December 2008 as a Christmas present to myself for $600 and it is probably the best deal and purchase I’ve ever made on eBay. Even though this is the first generation 2006 MacBook Pro 15″ Core Duo, it still has many years to go thanks to the well designed hardware and operating system Apple has been known for over the years.
I could start off by rambling on endlessly about the notebook’s aesthetics but that was done over three years ago on other reviews and they are now in the unibody design of the MacBook Pro so I’ll just stick with what affects me. I like the fact that this is only an inch thick when and the weight is EVENLY distributed throughout the notebook making it very easy to carry by hand, in a backpack, or in a laptop bag. There’s also the lightup keyboard that comes in handy at night or in low light conditions. What this notebook does need is a built in 5-in-1 memory card reader (yes I know the new MacBook Pros has an SD card but that’s not good enough!). I did find great alternative however by installing an unobtrusive Express Card reader by Sandisk. My only other big issue is that this version of the MacBook Pro gets very hot especially on the top right hand side. Just make sure you have good ventilation and work in a cool place whenever possible.
Even though this was the 2006 incarnation of the MacBook Pro, it still performs very well and runs just about every one of 2009’s applications I’ve thrown at it without any slowdowns or issues. After the Fedex guy dropped it off and powered it on to make sure that everything works (hey it’s eBay, you never know), I installed a Hitachi 320GB 7200 RPM drive and did a clean install of Leopard along with the rest of the applications that I use on a day to day basis such as Microsoft Office 2008, Adobe PhotoShop, iLife ‘09, Adium, FireFox, VLC, etc… I can run all of these programs simultaneously and have no slowdown issues whatsoever.
I can use iChat with video conferencing in one window, have Entourage in another, and PhotoShop in another, and FireFox in another (I normally have all of these up at once) and everything runs so smoothly compared to when I have something similar running in Windows Vista. Speaking of Windows, I set aside a partition of 60GB for Windows XP and Parallels because I still have a bunch of Windows only applications that I need.
Listening to music, watching videos, managing my iPhone and other entertainment related applications having been working great so far so really not much to talk about there except that since I have the Matte screen, I don’t have a glare problem when I’m working with this outdoors.
Just recently I replaced the crappy UJ-857C drive with a GSA-S10N DL DVDRW which now gives me Dual Layer capability and it was quite an easy process. I feel like I’ve just about maxed out everything I could on this old MacBook Pro but I have no doubt that I will still be using this for another 2-3 years or whenever the successor to Snow Leopard comes out.
I have this hooked up to an HP w2207 22″ LCD screen along with an external keyboard and mouse and use it as my main ‘desktop’ PC and usually take use my HP DV2-1030us when I travel. However this MacBook Pro isn’t always left at home and I do take it back and forth to the office or to the coffee shop when I need because I love how efficient and reliable OSX Leopard is.
If you can afford a new MacBook Pro, I say go for it. But if you need a reliable notebook with great performance, try finding an older Mac on eBay because there are definitely a lot of great deals out there. I highly recommend any Intel powered Mac because of the design, performance, software, and operating system.
