This past Tuesday my new 15-inch MacBook Pro arrived in the mail. I bought the base model of the new multi-touch line announced last week. There is an Apple retail store about twenty minutes from my house, but I ordered online to get the 7,200 RPM hard-drive upgrade.

First impression of the MacBook Pro: extremely impressive.

It is (obviously) light-years faster than my previous laptop, a PowerBook G4, but what is most surprising is how comparable it is to my Mac Pro. I bought the MacBook Pro with no intention of turning it into my main machine (hence why I bought the base, 2.4GHz model), but after a few days with it I am seriously considering selling the Mac Pro and going to a one-machine setup.

Since I got the laptop I have been in process of writing a full review of the thing which will include (totally unofficial) benchmarks comparing the new MBP’s performance to my 3.0 Quad-Core Mac Pro and my previous portable, the 12″ PowerBook G4.

UPDATE: Read the 4,700-word review here.