The 23-second boot

Review of the 15" 2.3 Ghz MacBook Pro

The 2011 Sandy Bridge MacBook Pros are outstanding in more ways than one! I have been testing one for several days now and I must say that this computer has exceeded my expectations. This computer has replaced my 15" Alienware 1.6Ghz Core i7 processor. I’m not going to run a bunch of diagnostics comparing every minutia of detail between applications. There are plenty of other MBP reviews that do that. Instead I want to give my report on how this machine is used and made a difference in my everyday work!

Before I even had the MBP I ordered 8GB of RAM from OWC (http://www.macsales.com) and a 115GB Mercury Pro Extreme SSD. I booted the MBP made sure that the memory worked then promptly shut it down and installed the 8GB of RAM and SSD. Approximately 5 minutes later I was installing OS X from the restore CD. The OS installed in about 20 minutes. Next I installed iLife from the Applications CD, this took a bit longer (approximately 25 minutes). Installed Office 2011, Fusion 3 and Starcraft II after that!

Boot time

The system boots into OS X in 23-seconds! Very fast read and write times overall, Word, Excel and Powerpoint loads almost instantly. Outlook takes a second or two longer but performance with MS Office has blown me away!

Boot camp

Installed Windows 7 Ultimate in about 15 minutes, patches took considerably longer! I only gave the boot camp partition 32GB since I only have 115GB to work with! Perhaps I will redo this later once I can afford a 240GB SSD! After loading a lot of patches, optimizing Windows for my SSD (like removing paging file, disabling defragmentation, disabling hibernation, etc.) and taking a Windows Experience Index check I was ready to test the Windows 7 boot time. NOTE: At this point my boot loader is set to boot from the BOOPCAMP partition and auto login is enabled. Windows 7 Ultimate boots in 32 seconds (considerably longer than OS X). Interestingly enough the Alienware boots in about the same time with the same SSD!

Battery Life

So far I have fully charged and discharged the battery about three times and have run the following tests.

•       Full wifi, Bluetooth, and high performance settings – 3 hour battery life
•       Full wifi, Bluetooth, and default battery settings – 5 hour battery life
•       Full wifi, Bluetooth, and high performance settings (installing apps) – 2 hour battery life

I intend to run several more tests with real world applications, will report back here later. 

Update on Saturday, May 14, 2011 at 11:45PM by David G (Chuzpah)

UPDATE: After using the computer for more than a week I timed the boot process again and I'm getting consistant 16 second boot times! I highly recommend the OWC Mercury Pro SSD drives over the Intel X25-M SSD that I had before!