New high-end MacBook Pro has 8 hour battery

Apple has announced an upgrade to its high-end MacBook Pro line of notebook computers. The unique thing about this model is that it uses a custom-made (read:expensive) non-removable 95WHr battery to achieve an estimated 8 hours between charges in a small package.

Other specs:

• 17-inch widescreen LED-backlit 1920 x 1200, glossy display, 140 degrees (H)/120 degrees (V) viewing angle, 700:1 contrast ratio, 60% greater color gamut
• Matte display option ($50 extra)
• 2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 6MB shared L2 cache
• 1066 MHz front-side bus
• 4GB 1066 MHz DDR3 SDRAM (up to 8GB supported)
• NVIDIA GeForce 9400M integrated graphics
• NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT discrete graphics with 512MB GDDR3 video memory
• 320GB Serial ATA hard drive running at 5400 rpm, with Sudden Motion Sensor
• a slot-load 8X SuperDrive with double-layer support (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW) optical drive
• Mini DisplayPort for video output (adapters sold separately)
• built-in AirPort Extreme® 802.11n wireless networking and Bluetooth 2.1+EDR
• Gigabit Ethernet port
• built-in iSight video camera
• three USB 2.0 ports
• one FireWire® 800 port (FireWire 400 compatible)
• ExpressCard/34 expansion card slot
• one audio line in and one audio line out port, each supporting both optical digital and analog
• glass Multi-Touch trackpad and illuminated keyboard
• built-in, 95WHr lithium polymer battery
• 85 Watt MagSafe® Power Adapter
• iLife '09 software (iWork '09 is $50 extra)
• Depleted batteries replaced for $179 (includes installation and disposal)

Price/availability: $2799 available at the end of January.

This machine will run Mac OSX, Windows, and Linux, so if price is no object it would be a good choice for developers, especially with the addition of virtualization software. However you may want to put in a faster disk drive (7200 RPM) and more memory than the standard model. A 256GB solid state disk drive is an option too.