I feel real lucky to be using a 30-inch display, because I need lots of space on my screen with which to get work done. Now I have to tell you that the first Mac I brought into my home (after working at an office with one for several years) came with the famous Apple 13-inch color display. But I felt constrained, because I couldn’t even place the contents of a single page in a document on the screen without reducing its size to near unreadability.

I recall that I found a system extension in those days that hacked the graphic drivers to stretch the screen slightly, to eliminate most of the telltale black border of a CRT. Sure, I could buy a larger display, but if you think today’s 30-inch models are expensive, double that price to get a 19-inch circa 1990.

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At the top of the list of Tuesday morning’s announcement of updates to the MacBook Pro line is that dual-layer burning SuperDrives and FireWire 800 are now available through the entire product line. These are two major criticisms of the previous versions of the 15-inch models. Other changes are predictable, based on the availability of Intel’s Core 2 Duo chips, which promise up to 39% extra performance. The base MacBook Pro, which remains at $1,999, incorporates a 2.16GHz processor, and hard disk storage expands to 120MB. Standard memory is 1GB, which can be upgraded to 3GB. Still at $2,499, the high-end version adds a 2.33GHz processor, with 2GB of RAM. Graphics are enhanced with a 256MB ATI Mobility Radeon chip; the cheaper MacBook Pro has 128MB of video memory. The 17-inch MacBook Pro, at $2,799, gets a 2.33GHz processor, 2GB of RAM, the same graphics card as the top-of-the-line 15-inch model, and a 160GB drive. Rather than repeat all the specs that everyone else is posting, just go to Apple’s MacBook Pro site for all the particulars. The remaining question is whether the standard MacBook will also earn a processor upgrade in the very near future, and I suppose that depends on whether Intel has enough parts to meet the demand.

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