Just picked one up for grad school. I know you might be thinking that this laptop is a bit much for grad school. I had intended to get an Air because I wanted something portable and running OSX but when I customized the Air to make it fairly future proof (8gigs of RAM, min. of 256 SSD and an i7) I was getting close to the price range of this machine anyways. I'll start with things that I don't like about it. First is what it is missing. Two minor things that I loved about my previous pro was the button on the left that showed the batt. life when the laptop was shut and the LED indicator that flashed when in sleep mode are gone. Neither of these are deal breakers but at the same time were very nice to have. A slightly bigger omission is the kensignton lock slot. I would compulsively lock my other macbook pro when I left the house and it was nearly half the price, now I must find clever hiding spots to put my mind at ease. My last complaint is that it does creak just slightly when lifted from one side, sometimes and a very light creak. It still feels like a very solid machine but this is noticeable when compared to the rock solid feel of previous pros. Now on to the good (there is plenty). The display. It doesn't really even need too much description.... it's just amazing. I will say that you can definitely tell when something is not optimized, though. This occurrence should decrease with time. Keyboard feels great ( I don't mind that it is kinda shallow) and the trackpad is like any other Macbook Pro, unrivaled from my experience. Performance is nearly instantaneous in casual computing and when editing 1080 content in iMovie it is impressively fast, I haven't ran any games on it because, well, it is ridiculous to game on a laptop. That said I haven't heard any fan noise whatsoever and haven't felt the slightest amount of heat from it. My old pro would get really hot when streaming video. I have been streaming alot of video and putting it to my TV through airplay and it hasn't even gotten slightly warm. Battery life is typical MacBook Pro good and OSX is great but that is subjective and by subjective I mean for people who love rock solid OS's. I'd give it a 9.3 but my only options are 9 or 10 so I rounded. If you have the money you will not be disappointed, I feel that this machine will be a great companion for many, many years.