Another 17" Review (this time from Europe)

Question

Received my 17" MacBook Pro today - shipped from Shanghai. After reading so many posts of people having problems with MacBooks, I was concerned. But it turned out to be near perfect. Here are some details
This is my first Apple Notebook after an G4 iMac. I waited for a G5 notebook but it never came. Then the MacBooks came but no 17" and no FW800 on the 15" - I will not buy a new iPod as long as the 2nd generation iPod does its work. I decided to wait a bit longer. I was looking for a desktop replacement because I only use it at work and carry in my larger case to work. I don't need so much mobility. I finally decided to buy the 17" after the first reviews very only. My employer gets some discount at Apple wich allowed me to buy an additional 1GB for free.
CONFIGURATION: Standard configuration. I'll add another 1GB RAM from a local retail store later. You can never have too much RAM.
DISPLAY: I choose a non-glossy screen. Glossy screens look better at first but because I am not a gamer and don't watch movies on my notebook it would only have drawbacks for me. I know the current glossy screend from some co-workers. Way to much reflection for my taste. Always hated this on CRTs. Display is good for a notebook but needs some calibration as all do. No dead pixels, even contrast and colors. Lower left corner seems a bit brighter but all notebook I every saw were not perfect in at least one corner. After having it running a few hours this went nearly away. Not as good as external displays but that's always the case for a Notebook. Could been a bit more brighter. But It always can be. Better than the Dell display I have in my notebook from work. But not as good as the displays in an iMac or the Cinema Displays (they could use an upgrade BTW) but again better than the two external Dell displays I have at work I regarding color and even contrast.
CASE: No manufacturing errors, no displaced keys, case perfectly closed, no scratches. As I expect for a high price product and some quality control.
HEAT: No problem. Gets a bit warm but I cannot follow people saying they are burning themselves. Seems to be the first high performance notebooks they ever had. These things always get hot. Not hotter or cooler than any other 17" is ever saw. The Sonys might be a bit cooler but they are also thickerr. But it is way cooler than the 15" Dell I have from work.
KEYBOARD/TOUCHPAD: Best touchpad I ever used. I always use touchpads on notebooks. Why carry a mouse with you. Once you get used to them they are great. The two finger thing is a nice addition. I was concerned about the missing 2nd button. I use a multi button Logitech mouse on my G4 800Mhz iMac. But not a really an issue. Touch pad is very accurate and button doesn't click as annoying as it does in all other notebook I ever encountered. Even the pricy Thinkpads have a touch pad button that make the hole thing sounds like cheapest plastic. Keyboard seems to be the same I know from the G4 Powerbooks. Not 100% my style but it is a matter of getting used to. Anyway I use Synergy2 at home to use one mouse and keyboard over multiple machines. And when one the road the keyboard will be as fine as any other ones. Because the touchtpad is quite big the keyboard is a bit too far at the bak for my taste. But that was always the same on the G4 Powerbooks. It is always a tradeoff between keyboard location and touchpad size. Because I am comfy with touchpads it's nothing to worry about after using it a few hours.
WHINE/NOISE: No whine at all. Not able to reproduce it yet. I know what you guys mean with the whine. I would call it a chirp. This is also present on the Dell I have from work when running on battery under certain circumstances when the screen is very bright (not the occasional inverter noise the Dell also has). But even on the Dell this is no problem because the fan is so loud. This baby is silent under normal work! I barely can hear it in a normal work environment. When under high load the fans kick in more and then it sounds like an idle Dell but the frequency isn't as annoying as in the Dell.
PERFORMANCE: compared to my G4 800Mhz iMac that I upgraded to 1,35GHz half a year ago (while waiting for the new PowerBooks) this baby is really fast. Everything feels snappier at once. Even with the same amount of memory like my G4 (1GB in that case) the difference is big. OK my old machine is 3,5 years old. RAM is an issue for me that's why the 17" will get another GB. I would even add more RAM it would be supported. Four slots for 1GB would have been better. The 5400rpm HD is fine. No difference to the 7200rpm I have in another Desktop machine at work. Way faster then the one in my Dell which makes the machine crawling. Of course in a year this machine will feel slow compared to new ones. It always does.
ROSETTA: Because I need to compare this to my old G4: faster even under Rosetta then the 1,35 GHZ G4. It's fine for me. And universal binaries will come with the next version. For now it's good.
THERMAL PASTE: Yes, I open all new equipment. Curse of the engineer. Very good applied as I am used from Apple and all vendors. Never saw anyone making a big mistake when they use thermal paste.
ISIGHT/REMOTE: This is really small, but makes very good pictures. Big improvement over the 1st generation iSight I have on my G4 and better than any cell phone camera I saw. Nice addition. I use iChat frequently but I would prefer if other IM and videoconference software would be available supporting a camera on OSX for better communication with people on XP machines. The remote is a nice addition. I don't really need it because I use my cell phone to control iTunes. Need to check out if KeyNote does support the remote. That would be great thing when doing presentations. But it reacts a bit poor, or maybe I haven't found the receiver yet and point it at the wrong spot.
BOOT CAMP: Haven't played with it. I need to find a way to install our company's XP build here from a cloned disk image. But I am more in for virtualization for a few business apps than really booting another OS. Parallels Desktop seems to be worth a try. But I doubt it will support anything I need. I'm sure Apple will to add virtualization to the next OS release on the level VMware does on Wintel machines.
PACKAGING/BUNDLING: If you care: Nice, slim, easy to carry and store if you have to sent it in. Came with different power plugs which is not unusual for electronics sold in Switzerland. Also latest iWork and iLife were pre-installed. DVD came in a nice carton which is better for storage than what Apple used in the past.
SUMMARY:
A nearly perfect specimen. Worth the money, not cheap but very good cost/performance ratio. A machine that will bring me over the next 3 years wich is my buying frame for Apple machines.
The following things would have made it perfect for me: Support for 4x1 GB RAM, brighter screen (it never can be too bright) and removing the DVD-Burner for a second battery would have been also a plus as well as docking station support and integrated SD card reader (have to check if some exist for PCCard 3/4). But this are the points I know before and they were the same on the PowerBooks. There is no perfect machine out there and never will be. But this baby comes as close as possible.
17" MacBook Pro   Mac OS X (10.4.6)  

Answer 1

Ordered on the 10th May in the afternoon, was shipped 20th and was at my office on the 26th in the afternoon (W8720xx BTW). I picked it up today because last Friday I was out of the office. According to the tracking information there was a two day delay due to "technical reasons" with the courier of which Apple also informed me via email.
I also need to mention that Apple changed the price after the notebook was shipped but still gave me this discount. This is how you make a customer happy - otherwise I would have cancelled and reordered anyway
And some Bootcamp Update: I played with it. Now I understand was this thing does. I first thought is was some kind of APM boot loader. But it is not. It basically creates an XP driver CD and re-partitions the drive for XP installation. But the latest firmware update added an APM layer to the EFI firmware. That's the important thing. With that I am able to boot all Windows CD. No problem to manually repartition the drive if you have some Unix knowledge, restore some image with Windows (e.g. Bart's Windows PE) or Linux based recovery CDs. Now trying it on an external drive.
Addition for Battery Life: Haven't let it run dry yet. I'll post a small update how long it will last when I start my software installation marathon tommorow afternoon. This should be a hint how long it will last in working like conditions (meaning not playing games or watching movies). Guess this could be interesting for some instead of the usual DVD watching test.