Apple bumps MacBook and MacBook Pro to Penryn

Ever since Penryn chips started making their way into mobile computers, we all knew it was just a matter of time before Apple bumped their mobiles to the latest chips from Intel as well. This morning, in their Tuesday update, they did just that. Both the MacBook and MacBook Pro are now rocking the Penryn Core 2 Duo chipset. If you are eyeing the MacBook Pro, those have the added bonus of a 6 MB L2 cache if you choose a 2.5 or 2.6 GHz chip, and Multi-Touch trackpads are now standard . That’s hot.

For the MacBook, pricing starts at $1099 for the base model, which includes a Combo drive instead of a SuperDrive, a 2.1 GHz chip, a 120GB hard drive, and 1 GB of RAM. For $200 more, you get a 2.4 GHz chip, an additional gig of RAM, a SuperDrive, and a 160 GB drive. If you need more hard drive space than that, you can get the Black MacBook, which hooks you up with 250 GB of storage.

Over on the MacBook Pro side of things, $1,999 gets you a 2.4 GHz chip, 2 GB of RAM, a 200 GB hard drive, double-layer SuperDrive, and a 256 MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT. If you move up to the $2,499 model, you are bumped up to a 2.5 GHz chip (with 6 MB L2 cache!), a 250 GB hard drive, and a 512 MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT. For $2,799, you get all the same specs, but you are bumped up to a 17-inch screen, if that’s your thing.

All in all, we’d say this is a worthy upgrade if your mobile computer is looking a bit long in the tooth.

Read More | Apple Press Release