The very day the new MacBook Pros where announced during the WWDC09 Keynote, I ordered on the online Apple store a 15" model with a 2.8GHz CPU and a 500GB/7200rpm hard disk.
8 days later I received my machine, turned it on and had a bad surprise: you can feel the whole case of the computer vibrating. It is so obvious and constant that it makes it a discomfort to use, even after a couple minutes. It is even worse if you type with your palms resting on both sides of the trackpad. And you can even feel the vibrations on the screen case and bezel. And this is even when the machine is idle.
Contacted about this issue, a technician from Apple's French tech support confirmed that they were aware of this and had received and internal support note describing this "behaviour" and explaining that some customers might complain about it, but that it was "normal behaviour" due to the high rotational speed of the disk platers... In real life, this normal behavior makes the machine unusable.
I dropped by my local Apple retailer and we did a side by side comparison between three Unibody MacBook Pros: my new generation @7200rpm, a new gen @5400rpm and a previous generation Unibody @5400rpm. Verdict: the 7200 model vibrates a lot, the new 5400 vibrates only slightly and the previous generation 5400 does not vibrate at all. It seems that the unibody construction of the new machines, added to the fact that the bottom case is now a single piece of metal, make these machines prone to vibrations, problem amplified by the use of a Seagate Momentus 7200.4@3Gb/s as CTO. Some members of our team have indicated that they have installed 7200rpm HDDs from other vendors in their First generation Unibody MacBook Pros and haven't experienced any vibrations.
Conclusion: right now, if you want to order a new MacBook Pro and you don't like massages, you might want to stay away from Apple's CTO 500GB/7200rpm.
As for my own machine? It's going back to Apple in RMA and I'm getting the same model with a 5400rpm HDD, which I'll probably change for an SSD drive one of these days, when they are cheaper.
