Hello all!

    I just got my new macbook pro 13in 2.26ghz. I got 4 gigs of ram and the 250gb hard drive. It came with snow leopard as well.

Much to my surprise, this thing is FREAKING FAST. Really fast. Especially the 64bit apps like mail and safari.

I was almost regretting not getting an SSD, but most apps launch very very quickly. Almost as fast as my mac pro raid, which is strange cause it's only a 5400 RPM drive.

And unless your'e heavy lifting, the battery really does last 6-7 hours. (although not for the first day or so when spotlight is indexing here and there, stupid MDS process :)  )

Anyhow, thought I'd share my excitement. I'm afraid to fire up Sibelius 5 until I hear about an update :)

BTW the multi-touch trackpad gestures are VERY well implemented. I don't know how I ever lived without them! Coming from a guy who almost always plugged in a mouse to avoid using trackpads, this is huge :) You just get so used to the efficiency!

Thanks for sharing your findings. So far, I'm finding Snow Leopard to be pretty darn snappy in most cases. Still struggling with some older apps that don't want to install, but this OS upgrade has been one of the smoother ones.

Sibelius 6.0.3 is running well in Snow Leopard. I haven't tried Sib5 yet, but that may be a bit more risky.

I'm considering getting either a 13"; or 15"; Macbook Pro. Charlie, how has the 13"; screen been working out for you? My initial feeling was that it seemed small, but I'd be curious to hear how another Sibelius user has felt about it.

Thanks.

I use Sibelius on my 12.1"; laptop occasionally. The res is 1280x720. Things can get tiny at times for sure, but I find it entirely manageable with appropriate zoom levels for the situation.

To be fair, I don't use the laptop much, and I imagine that if I wanted to sit back and see a full band score during playback it wouldn't work very well. The size is so nice for travel, though. The laptop fits easily in the seatback pocket of airliners, which makes it so very easy to put away between door closing and cruising altitude when flying.

Thanks for the input, Joe.  I'm probably going to go ahead and pop for the 15"; for the exact  reason you had mentioned - viewing larger scores. I'll most likely have it hooked up to an external monitor most of the time, so it won't matter as much. However, whenever I am traveling, I definitely want to give my eyes a break :-)

Thanks again for the feedback.

The samsung-based SSDs that companies like Apple, Dell, etc. offer as options should be avoided.  They are overpriced and not very fast.  The Intel and Indilinix-based drives are significantly faster.

Here's a benchmark that tests how drives handle many small files (like a sample library.)  The bottom drive (Momentus) is one of the best laptop drives, and the next one up (VelociRaptor) is one of the best desktop drives.  The samsung-based SSD above that is not much of an improvement compared to the other SSDs.
[img]http://img176.imageshack.us/img176/2156/samsungnew.png[/img]

A good 120 GB SSD is going to run around $300, less than the ";upgrade"; price Apple will charge you.  Then you can always sell the drive that came with the Mac for $50 or more. 

To give you a real-world idea of what the difference is, loading up Sibelius and samples for a battery can take 30 seconds on a normal drive, but only about 5 seconds with a SSD.

Wow. I might have to pop for one of those puppies!

[quote author=J Mattson link=topic=3312.msg17608#msg17608 date=1253901555]
Here's a benchmark that tests how drives handle many small files (like a sample library.) ��_
[/quote]

Note that the chart is talking about *write* performance, but whenever you're dealing with sample libraries the important numbers are for *reads*.
Reads should be faster for SSDs than disk drives, which will speed up the initial load as you mentioned above.

Yeah, they didn't publish a benchmark image for reads, but it's very similar.

When you're dealing with large files (like HD video) then the SSDs have less of an advantage- but most of the time people are reading/writing very small files.

A 2 GHz computer with a good SSD with 'feel' significantly faster than a 3 GHz computer most of the time.

[quote author=Bryan Harmsen link=topic=3312.msg17604#msg17604 date=1253870757]
I'm considering getting either a 13"; or 15"; Macbook Pro. Charlie, how has the 13"; screen been working out for you? My initial feeling was that it seemed small, but I'd be curious to hear how another Sibelius user has felt about it.

Thanks.
[/quote]

SOrry I didn't get back to ya sooner :)  School's been kicking my butt. Before this 13in (widescreen) I had a powerbook G4 12in (non wide screen)  and for some reason the difference is HUGE. This is the perfect travel size. So I guess if you're carrying it around all day like me, 13in is great!  My scores look fine, but I always zoom in quite a bit (Apple + Plus FTW) Even on my desktop, it' just easier to see stuff.

I have a 5400 RPM drive since I do most of my heavy lifting on my mac pro, but even still it's quite impressive. The 64bit applications launch VERY fast. Safari launches twice and fast as firefox, it's crazy.

I heard the intel SSD's were amazing in the unibody macbook pro's but I refuse to spend that much money. I'll upgrade in a couple years probably and save some cash :)

So anyhow that's me. I love this thing. Multi-touch is amazing! Oh and this 13in is a lot lighter than my powerbook g4 (or at least it feels that way to me.