@kobachi

I can’t say how much better it really is, but on my MBP and all other Macs with this design it’s strong. It might be other aspects to the hinge and not the placement, but I’ve never had an Intel Mac with a weak hinge assembly.

On top of that, i can push the display back very far, until it’s pointless to have at that level even with an IPS display. This does seem to allow for a thinner device, which I like, but I also like the ports in the back. I guess when it comes down to it I’ll take a thinner stronger device than the convenient of having no wires off the side, though I only use power and the occasional USB port anyway.

No more optical drive so I can have a larger battery and more ports across that 5 inches of port side space that is now wasted.

@Johanu

Any day? Then you don’t understand how processors work. More cores don’t equate to more performance. Are you also still stuck thinking that more Hz equates to more performance?

@PBB

You’ll likely see an i7 in the MBP come early 2010. The HP Envy has a 45nm “Clarksdale" i7-7xxQM with a 45W TDP that was released in September 2009. The next MBP will have the yet unreleased 32nm “Arrandale” i7-6xxM with a 35W TDP.

This will match the current MBPs and will save some power due to the lack of a separate Northbridge, which I read has a max TDP of 8W.

The Envy uses a power hungry quad-core while the MBP will have a more power efficient dual-core. Some will scoff at this but it’s a wise move for most notebooks at this time. Just look at the battery rating of this Envy to see why.

@Redon Gor

Then you are myopic to think that companies have to stop all R&D in one area and go full on all eggs in one basket simply because a newer technology will eventually surpass it.

The fact is that they invest in many technologies. Seagate also announced enterprise-grade SSDs this day. And a 160GB single platter 1.8” HDD was just announced by Toshiba a few months ago along with the new iPod Classic, up from 120GB. We’ll see the 1.8” HDDs fade away, like the 1” HDDs did, before we see the 2.5” and 3.5” HDDs die off.

They are fast enough and reliable enough to make the lower cost per GB well worth it for most uses at this point.

"...a four port 802.11n wireless switch..."

Do you mean "...a 4-port 10/100/1000BASE-T switch, 802.11a/b/g/n wireless router..."

@acme64 The drive is thinner because it has half the platters as a 9.5mm drive

@(Unverified) Thanks for the info. I apparently missed that release. I still say that optical drives will start to be obsolesced as internal drives from notebooks in 2010-11, but it’s good to see they can make a 7mm optical drive. The 13” and 15” HP Envys are sans optical drives and they are a beautiful thing.

@Nitesh 9.5mm for Dell Studio 15.

This was expected. SSD standard is 7mm and the only thing higher-end notebooks from going thinner is the current inclusion of the 9.5mm optical drive. Once that is gone—and it will start going away en massee in 2010 or 2011—then we can go to thinner cases which can use 7mm HDDs.

Of course, you don’t really get any more performance with the optical drive gone. The thinner case will require components to be spread and the cooling HW to take up more area. Same goes for the battery just to have the sam mAh.

This trend will have its pros and cons, but it will be where things will move to. This will just be a cheaper solution to 2.5” SSDs for these thin notebooks. Nothing more, nothing less, though we should see 400GB+ single-platter 2.5” HDDs in 2010.