
This model shipped with Mac OS X 10.4.8 Tiger and supports OS X 10.7 Lion. It has 3 USB 2.0 ports, one more than the 15″ MBP offers.

This model includes built-in dual-DVI support for Apple’s 30″ Cinema Display, ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 graphics, and an ExpressCard/34 slot (replacing the older PC Card). The other hardware improvement is use of an 8x SuperDrive with dual-layer burning instead of the 4x single-layer burner of the earlier 17″ MacBook Pro. Where the earlier model has a 120 GB hard drive, 160 GB is now standard, and there are two other options: a 100 GB 7200 rpm drive and a 200 GB 4200 rpm one. It now supports a maximum 3 GB of RAM, up from 2 GB on the earlier model.

The new 17″ Core 2 model has a 2.33 GHz CPU and ships with 2 GB of RAM. Part of that comes from the more efficient CPU, and part from an 8% faster CPU. On 2006.10.24, Apple moved the MacBook Pro line to Intel’s newer Core 2 Duo CPU, claiming “up to 39% faster” performance than the model it replaced.
