The things that I always weigh first in hardware are screen res and disk i/o. For the type of work I do, I always rank CPU third (I used to evaluate hardware ba

The things that I always weigh first in hardware are screen res and disk i/o. For the type of work I do, I always rank CPU third (I used to evaluate hardware based on my ability to run VMs, but these days I find myself renting on-demand EC2 instances instead). I've been mighty disappointed by Apple laptop screen res prior to the latest generation of MBP's, but I have to admit, these new models impress me, and I've generally been quite dismissive of the Air line. I was recently entertaining the thought of replacing my 13" Macbook with a 15" MBP, but as it is, my full briefcase including a Macbook is already a shoulder killer. Given the evolution of my own use cases, I think I'd actually consider one of these guys as my next notebook.