The new MacBooks are here

After some delay, Apple finally revealed the new MacBook Pro line of laptops, that bring improvements in processing power, new video cards and more advanced displays.

The much awaited Intel Core i5 and i7 processors are finally here, and they are available for the 15 and 17 inch models. This brings up to 50% increase in speed for the laptops, a much needed boost that sets them high in the fight against the competition. Unfortunately, the 13 inch model is left with a Core 2 Duo processor, but gains some speed on the video processing side thanks to NVIDIA’s GeForce 320M graphics processor.

For the larger models, the graphic board of choice is NVIDIA GeForce GT330M, a pretty powerfull model that also offers efficiency and support for high definition graphics. Very interesting is Apple’s new automatic graphics switching technology, that will determine how much video power is required by the applications and will switch between the graphic processor. This will bring a longer battery life, that gets up to 8-9 hours on a single charge.

There’s also news about the displays, the 17 inch model being available with a 1920 x 1200 screen, and the 15 inch model coming with three different display options – a basic LED with 1440 x 900 resolution, a bigger 1680 x 1050 pixels model, and a special anti-glare screen.

Each model now comes with 4 GB RAM of memory, upgradable to 8 GB 1066 MHz DDR3 and 500 GB hard drives, more than enough for huge movie or music collections. For more reliability and faster acces speeds, users can also choose 128, 256 or even 512 GB solid state drives (SSD). These have no moving parts and are ideal for laptops, that are constantly moved and suffer shocks.

The prices start from 1199 $ for the basic 13 inch MacBook Pro, with Intel Core 2 Duo Processor, 4 GB of RAM and 250 GB hard drive and get up to 2299 $ or more for a 17 inch model, with a Intel Core i5 processor, GeForce GT 330M video card and 500GB of hard disk space. All the extra options, like i7 processors, SSD drives or more RAM will add to the price