As far as I know Amazon has not carried the 17 inch Macbook Pro WITH ANTIGLARE. However, you can purchase the glossy screen variants from them. I was a bit cautious and hesitant to purchase such a big ticket item from Amazon resellers especially at the great prices listed for these 2.5ghz 17 inch Antiglare MBP machines. Alas, the other review from Nester gave a bit of confidence along with the consideration that these resellers are guaranteed through Amazon's A-Z Guarantee. I did on one occasion, about a year ago, did have to contact Amazon about some memory sticks purchased through Ant-Online when they sent me the wrong sticks of ram. Although I didn't have to go through with the claim as Ant-Online did take the ram back.I placed my order through Mobile Chopper (amazon reseller) Sunday night and received it through through express mail today (wednesday). I am happy to report that my package is the real deal. Brand new, per spec, and with model number md386ll/a listed on the box. The package was shipped from Canada. I was under the impression that MBPs were more expensive there but I could be wrong. Nonetheless, my experience with the reseller was excellent. Ok, I needed to post this review with a commentary about the reseller program because, as mentioned, as of this writing Amazon does not sell the Antiglare models through their site. Not sure why but it is what it is. The resellers seem to be listing these at over $400 to $500 cheaper than the apple store and that's before tax. I am very happy with this purchase, now at this price range I'll be upgrading the ram with Crucial 16gb memory sticks along with a Samsung 830 SSD drive.
It's a lot of money for this laptop so you should definitely check them out at the apple store along with getting some reviews from owners which are not in short supply. In other words, get a real life hands on experience on one of these as a review of the laptop itself won't get you too far. I'm in tech so nowadays it's pretty necessary to be versatile and the need outweighs my personal preference although I can see myself using this as my dedicated machine. (only wish they had Fiddler for Macs).
Update 4/13/12:
I thought I had an issue with the sound and took the machine into the Genius Bar. I was having sound popping and crackling sounds when forwarding/rewinding youtube videos. They promptly replaced it with a new one after a battery of tests. Turns out it wasn't a macbook issue afterall. Youtube must have update their flash player with some bad code as my PCs were suddently making popping sounds too.
Update this machine with 16gb crucial ram directly from Crucial and it's been great. You want to be sure you use reliable memory if you plan on swapping out the hard disk with an SSD in the future. The MBPs are finicky about the kind of ram you use and problems can manifest when pairing them with SSDs in the future as many forums have indicated. Also, since this machine comes with an HD if you plan on upgrading to an SSD in the future keep in mind that Apple disables TRIM on non-Apple SSDs. This includes Samsung 830 and Crucial m4. It can be easily enabled through the terminal using a few shell commands found on the web.
There is still one manufacturer that makes a laptop with the WUXGA 17 display -Apple, on the MacBook Pro. So I bought the latest model, with faster disk drive and anti-glare display. Even upgraded the memory to 16GB (not supported by Apple). This laptop flies and I must say is best laptop I've owned in 18 years. To top it off I'm running Windows 7 Professional, flawlessly.
Pros:
17" WUXGA Anti-glare display at 1920x1200
Power adapter sounds like a small thing but the MacBook Pro power adapter is very clever, small and lightweight. Compared to the 1 lb brick I was carrying with the ThinkPad, it's an absolute delight.
Super skinny and light. Unbelievable really compared to the laptops I've recently used.
Cons:
Keyboard. It has backlighting, which is helpful. But I really miss DEL, HOME, END, PG UP, PG DN, etc. Those keys are used extensively when writing code and the two-key combination alternatives are frustrating.
Couple of other caveats: I'm not a video game player so can't speak to the laptop's video gaming capabilities. Also, don't listen to a lot of music on the laptop. Speakers sound fine to me but I'm not in a position to judge. I use an external mouse so I can't really address the trackpad.
Bottom line: When I bought in April 2012, it was the best laptop available on the market. I have no regrets and I doubt you will either.At first I hesitated to order this Macbook Pro model. Amazon does not directly sell Macbook models with different specs other than the most basic, at least not on the 17" model. I wanted the anti glare screen and most importantly the 7200rpm hard drive. The i7 processor is super fast, I was ordering extra memory from Crucial so the only bottle neck was going to be the 5400rpm hard drive from the basic model.
The reason I hesitated is that only sellers from the marketplace sell this model and I didn't know if I should trust such an expensive item to some seller other than Amazon directly. First, the description had some typos, but I contacted the seller and replied me promptly. I have to say that the description seems different if you check it out on the web browser or on the iPad Amazon app. I have no idea why, maybe the sellers have different fields to fill out for each device platform and they don't just do a copy/paste.
In my case, I ordered if from the Silverberries seller. What was strange is that this model was hidden on plain sight. If you search Amazon for Macbook pro 17" you don't get this model as second or third option. I had to specify the search as "Macbook Pro 17 7200" since I was looking specifically for the fast hard drive. Then, I got the search result. I wonder how they sell if the most basic search doesn't display it within the first page or second page.
Even though there are many reviews on the Macbook Pro 17" with the basic specs, there was no review for this model specially sold from Silverberries or a couple other sellers who have it available.
Today (March 1st, 2012) after 15 days of buying it, I am trying to help other buyers with a good review of the seller and the specific Macbook model but I found out that the Silverberries store front is unavailable and this model is available only from Semidevil88. With these strange seller names it is hard to trust them even if they have good feedback. My advice is to always contact the seller before placing and order of over $100 usd.
Overall, my experience with Silverberries and this Macbook model was great. The item arrived on time, well packed and new as described. I will not review the Macbook itself, just go and read other Macbook Pro 17" reviews from the basic model and add that I am completely satisfied with the hard drive speed and the anti glare screen. My only complaint is that I am used to my 17" Toshiba Satellite Pro with a full keyboard and the Mac keyboard is somewhat limited. I wish it had the keypad for fast typing numbers. Other than that, it is much slimmer, ligther and faster than my old Toshiba which is still a decent rig even after 5 years of use.I've had most models of Powerbook and MacBook Pros. This is my second 17-inch with anti-glare screen (typing this on the older one) and I find they are just amazingly reliable machines. Chose to get a discontinued model because the larger non-retina display suits my production and presentation needs much better. Upgraded the Ram to 16Gb. and replaced the HD with a 512Gb SSD. Excellent device.Recently bought one through MacMall new-in-box (OnSale has a *real* bad reputation). Third-party sellers are gaining some sales through professionals who are still desiring a 17" HD Apple laptop for editing, etc.; pretty soon these will be totally off the market.
This was my first personal laptop purchase and the first Mac I've worked with in over a year. Setup was actually quite easy, despite the fact my first actions upon getting the computer was to take off the back cover and yank out everything I could and replace it with a superior (SSD, max RAM, extra-large HDD instead of internal optical drive). Lion's "Internet Recovery" allowed me to direct download a fresh install after formatting my new drive with Disk Utility. Around 20-30 minutes and I'm off and running.
~Model MD386LL/A Specifics~
Pros:
Sandy Bridge quad-core is still a top performing CPU. The mobile graphics card isn't what I'm used to, but still quite good for medium range performance.
17" laptop with the Apple form factor that's thinner and lighter than any comparable model. Unibody is also pretty good with heat dissipation. If you want something light and small, buy yourself an Airbook/Ultrabook or a tablet.
Non-Retina models are still user-upgradeable in regards to disk drive, memory and optical drive bay. And the hardware improvements were practically plug-and-play.
Anti-glare screen may seem less "shiny," but I can really see the light reflections/glares on my iPhone 5, so dealing with it on a laptop would've been hell.
Lion's multi-touch features are pretty good for most tasks, save the things I would prefer to have a trackball mouse.
Cons:
Laptop vs. Desktop drawbacks: no CPU overclocking, Turbo Boost's sporadic jumps not much help for things like video/animation rendering.
Still very expensive. More so than the modern, non-Retina models. Best deals are on "fully-loaded" eBay offers, which include professional software suites along with the computer.
Being a discontinued model, there'll be less and less support for these in the next few years. That also means replacement parts will start to be hard to come by towards the end of the model's lifespan.
So far, it's been a great machine, and I look forward to tweaking it further. Will update in the future.
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