I have been on a MacBook C2D 2.4 Ghz (with 6GB RAM) for the last 3 years and wanted to upgrade and the MB Air seemed to be the right way to go. Selling the iPad and the MacBook and getting the Air 13" w/ 4GB RAM and the 256GB SSD, to be precise. At the Apple store I realized the the MacBook Air (at this time) is really older technology in an amazing form factor, but I did not feel compelled to spend $1800 on pretty much the same CPU as I just had for 3 years already. Then the new MB Pro showed up, and after 72h with it I am super happy.
This MBPro with the new i7 2.7 Ghz CPU is about twice as fast as the 2008 MacBook I had. It scored 6800 points on Geekbench. Installing Office Mac 2011 and Adobe CS3 was super fast and I look forward to have VMWare Fusion running much better than on the older MacBook. I just watched the full iPad2 keynote (1h) over wireless on battery plus 1 hour of surfing, battery says 4h left, awesome! I already swapped the hard drive for a 320GB/7200 and in 6-12 month I might go SSD, but for now I stay with regular disks. There are some great 750GB /7200rpm drives now for about $100.
It's slick. I love the illuminated keyboard, finally on the smaller pro machine. The trackpad is awesome. The new LED screen is super crisp and bright. The new graphics HD 3000 chip is pretty good and enough for light Photoshop work. I can only recommend it. If you think MBP 13", go for the fastest CPU like this one (2.7 i7) and get all the rest of the upgrades later. Additional RAM is cheap these days and better HDD and soon the prices for the SSD will come down as well. Swapping the hard drive is easy and the same as will all the Pro models of the last 2 years or so. I can't wait to put like 500GB of SSD into this in 1-2 years and have it fly... Love this machine, best Mac ever (after PowerBook and 2 MacBooks).
