Rarely does Apple update an entire line of laptops in one fell swoop. While the new aluminum MacBooks didn't come as a surprise, a new MacBook Pro seemed like a long shot. This latest crop of MacBook Pros benefit from a new manufacturing process and host of performance tweaks that keep them among the best notebooks on the market. The Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch (Dual Graphics, $2,499) is an amazing piece of design engineering, not just because Apple marketed the living daylights out of the manufacturing process, but because it looks and feels that way. In addition to a glass screen, a lighter and thinner aluminum chassis, and a multi-purpose touchpad, this thin-and-light also boasts dual graphics cards from nVidia.

Apple has spent years looking for a new way to design laptops. By carving its chassis out a thick piece of aluminum slab to form a uniform enclosure, the company has done just that. Not only have they reduced the number of parts used, but they also claim they have made their systems a lot stronger. After having held it in my own hands, I can tell you, the new MacBook Pro does feel sturdier than its predecessor. The lid didn't succumb to extreme flexing, and the palm rest area withstood a good amount of force from my deadly palms.

At 5.5 pounds, the MacBook Pro 15-inch (Dual Graphics) is slightly heavier than the previous MacBook Pro (5.3 lbs), but that is still considerably lighter than the HP HDX16t (6.8 lbs) and the Dell Studio 15 (5.9 lbs). It's the only 15-inch mainstream laptop that is less than an inch thick (0.95 inches to be exact), shattering the 1-inch record held by the previous MacBook Pro.

Though not the first glass screen to hit the scene (HP and Voodoo are already big proponents of glass displays) and not the 16-by-9 format that many pundits were calling for, the 15.4-inch widescreen is still a sight to behold. A higher resolution than its 1,440-by-900 one would've sweetened the pot, similar to what a 1080p resolution (1,920-by-1,080) did for the HDX16t.

The full-size keyboard is a departure from the original one used in the 15-inch (Penryn). The new MacBook Pro adopts the non-interconnecting, groove-less keys from the MacBook Air and the new MacBook 13-inch (Aluminum). Typing is an absolute pleasure, not a chore, and the illuminated keyboard is a great asset in darkly lit areas. Competitors like the HDX16t and the Studio 15 use more traditional keyboards.

Evidently, the thought never occurred to anyone that a touchpad and mouse button can be combined into a single entity, thereby creating a larger surface to scroll, click and navigate. Aside from Apple, anyway. The touchpad slopes downward allowing you to click at the bottom, left and right hand sides of it, but not at the top. Apple even figured out the right sensitivity levels to use for the mouse click button. Clicking the entire touchpad seemed awkward at first, but it didn't take long for me to get used to it. And then there's the elusive right click mouse button that in the past could only be triggered with the help of the Control key. In Leopard's System Preferences, you can designate the touchpad to right-click simply by applying two fingers or a single finger to the right and left bottom corners.

The new MacBook Pros come with gesture capabilities as well. In addition to pinching, rotating, and enlarging with two fingers, you can swipe four fingers to the right or left to switch between applications. Swiping upwards with four fingers will trigger the Expose application, while swiping four fingers downwards will bring up the dashboard. Applying three fingers to it will let you peruse through photos in the iPhoto application. This is very cool stuff.

Unfortunately, its feature set is the one place where the new MacBook Pro couldn't deliver. Built-in media card readers are found in almost every laptop on the market—except those with the Apple logo. With the proliferation of digital cameras, you'd think that Apple would at least include an SD slot. The MacBook Pro, however, did manage to carry forward the ExpressCard slot, for expansion devices like mobile broadband. According to Steve Jobs, Apple's reluctance to support Blu-Ray drives revolves around licensing and cost issues. If you run down the HDX16t's features list, you can find things like Blu-Ray drives, a media card reader, E-SATA and HDMI ports—those are features that MacBook Pro users will miss.

At least for current MacBook Pro owners, the features didn't get any worse. There are 2 USB ports, a Firewire 800 port, Ethernet, optical out and a headphone jack. The slot-loading DVD burner works the same way as older generation drives. The one significant change is cutting off DVI-out in favor of DisplayPort. Apple and Lenovo believe that DisplayPort is the video port of the future, while every other laptop manufacturer is betting on HDMI. Either technology, though, can drive both audio and video to an external display; DVI-Out carries video only. There are minor storage enhancements as well, such as the addition of a 320GB hard drive (5,400rpm and 7,200rpm versions), and an insanely expensive 128GB SSD option ($500). And of course, the MagSafe magnetic adapter, the iSight webcam, and the Apple remote can also be found on the new MacBook Pro.

The new MacBook Pro has a distinct advantage over the HDX16t and the Studio 15 in that it houses two different graphics chipsets. The nVidia GeForce 9400M GT—the same one found in the MacBook 13-inch (Aluminum) preserves battery life, while the nVidia GeForce 9600M GT—the same one found in the HDX16t—boosts 3D performance. The ability to switch graphics isn't new to the laptop space. Both the Lenovo Thinkpad T400 and the Sony VAIO VGN-Z540E have been using this technology for months now, and choosing between chipsets is as simple as flipping a physical switch (Sony) or checking off a checkbox (Lenovo). With the MacBook Pro, you'll have to navigate to system preferences and choose the Energy Saver setting. You then select "Better Battery Life" to choose the 9400M GT or "Higher performance" to enable the 9600M GT chipset. Logging out of the system to finalize the switch is required, though.

Intel announced its Centrino 2 platform months ago and the MacBook Pro is one of the last remaining systems to get the update. The platform can be pretty powerful. The HDX16t, for example, comes in a 2.53-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T9400 (as configured) and a 2.8-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T9600 processor ($300 option) options. Support for DDR3 memory is also good news for database programmers and professional photo and video editors, as it speeds up the front-side bus for better performance. This configuration comes with 3GBs of DDR3 memory.

Because of a lower clocked processor, the MacBook Pro trailed the HDX16t in most of our benchmarks tests. The MacBook was 11 seconds slower in video encoding tests. Cinebench R10 results also had a hard time keeping up, falling behind the HDX16t by 12 percent. Its SYSMark 2007 Overall score trailed the HDX16t's by 31 percent. Again, upgrading to the 2.8-GHz processor will place the MacBook Pro on a more level playing field as the HDX16t.

Running my benchmarks in Windows Vista (via BootCamp), I detected excessive heat in the base and on the palm rests of the system, and I often heard the fans kick even with the 2.53-GHz processor. Upgrading to a faster processor will only cause more heat issues down the road. The Leopard operating system, on the other hand, does a better job containing heat dissipation, as its energy saver and power management routines are optimized to handle heavier work loads.

The MacBook Pro did perform well on my 3D benchmarks. At low resolutions, its 3DMark '06 scores surpassed the HDX16t by almost 25 percent, while Crysis scores were at least twice as fast as those of the HDX16t. It's even more peculiar that both systems were running these tests using the same graphics chipset—the nVidia GeForce 9600M GT.

The ability to switch to a less power-hungry graphics card gives the MacBook Pro a big advantage when it comes to preserving battery life. Unfortunately, running Windows via BootCamp will not let you switch between graphics; this is only permissable with Leopard. Having said that, I can only report scores for the nVidia 9600M GT chipset. According to MobileMark 2007, the Macbook Pro drained its 50-Wh battery in 2 hours flat. Not very flattering, but the HDX16t's 2 hours and 8 minutes score was nothing to brag about either. The HDX16t doesn't have a dual graphics option, and at the moment, both units don't have extended batteries. Heat issues in Windows Vista stuck out like a sore thumb, a likely culprit for the meager battery scores, although I don't think that the 4 hour claim by Apple is entirely accurate either. But I do think that the battery will perform better in Leopard, and the ability to switch to the 9400M GT chipset is there to help.

If you had to make a list of pros and cons for the Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch (Dual Graphics), anything involving design would occupy one through ten on the list of pros. The ability to switch graphics is another pro, but Lenovo and Sony have already broken ground in this area. Design alone is probably enough to have Mac fanatics reaching into their deep pockets once again, but if you're looking for a longer list of features, the HP HDX16t has higher screen resolutions, Blu-Ray drives, HDMI-Out, an E-SATA port, and more USB ports—and its cheaper, too.

Check out the Apple Macbook Pro 15-inch's (Dual Graphics) performance test results.