Apple To Ship 17-inch MacBook Pro Laptop

The Cupertino, Calif.-based computer maker said the new MacBook is an inch thick, weighs 6.8 pounds and is powered by a 2.16 GHz Intel Core Duo processor. It comes with 1 GByte of DDR2 SDRAM memory, a built-in iSight Webcam and a 68-watt hour lithium polymer battery that provides up to 5.5 hours of battery life.

Apple said the 17-inch MacBook, which runs the Mac OS X 10.4.6 “Tiger” operating system, will ship next week and carry a list price of $2,799.

The new notebook comes a week after Apple said sales of Macintosh computers have stalled as the company transitions its systems to Intel processors.

In reporting second-quarter earnings last week, Apple executives said there has been a "pause" in sales of the Intel-based systems, largely because critical third-party software, such as Adobe Photoshop, hasn’t yet been optimized for the Intel Macs. Solution providers also have reported slow application performance in Intel Macs.

Apple’s new notebook also is coming out at a time when when competitors like Dell, Lenovo and Hewlett-Packard have begun shipping sub-$1,000 dual-core notebooks based on Intel technology. Last week, for example, Dell began pricing its dual-core Inspiron E1505 notebooks at $749.