The new MBPs have “huge leaps in performance”, yet still ship with 5400-rpm hard drives? True, the average consumer still assumes that processor speed is the number one factor to get a faster computer. But performance is more than how fast you can crunch a video, it’s also how fast you can boot up your library, move files around, etc… You and I both know that once you go SSD you never go back.

So why not at least make 7200-rpm drives the baseline? Is the price and performance difference between a 5400- and 7200-rpm drive really that different?

Speaking of SSDs, I put a Mercury Extreme Solid State Drive into my 3-year-old aluminum MacBook Pro last fall and it was like buying a new computer. In fact, thanks to the SSD, the specs on my old MBP match almost identically those of the brand new Air’s.

The New MacBook Pros