9 days or so – thats when Apple is estimating that I’ll get my new MacBook Pro (I still think the name “MacBook Pro” is kinda stupid).
I’ve been agonizing over which to get – the MacBook or the MacBook Pro, and I finally came down on the site of the Pro. The extra $400 is buying me pixels and pixel pushing when it comes right down to it. I’ve been living in a 1024×768 world for several years now on my day-to-day programming/fiddling/whatever machine. Time to get some more real estate on the screen, not to mention a huge leap in processing power. From a 533Mhz G3 to a 2.16Ghz Intel core duo. I rather expect a stunning increase in speed with this move.
I also ventured very close to getting one of those 20″ iMacs – they’re very, very nice machines. I wish the cabling was a little better situated (like a usb port on the side or front for the usb keyfob that has replaced the ubiquitous floppy disk), but it’s an incredible value for a desktop machine. And the screen… well, it’s not a 30″ display, but it’s darned nice. Way more than you can comfortably do *in* a laptop.
The new laptop is a 15″ (17″ is just too big of a laptop for me), so my new default resolution is going to be 1440×900. The MacBook was 1280×800. And there’s a video card difference – the pro version is certainly capable of driving another screen without any issue at all.
Well, it should ship in a few days, and then it’ll be a little easier to track. Until it ships, I’m not counting it rolling really. There’s no telling when a parts backlog somewhere will screw up the production line, and I wouldn’t expect the online store thingy to really be 100% accurate with build and ship timings.
And that concludes my wild spending for the summer – been planning this for a while. WWDC ticket, ADC Select membership, and a new laptop. It’ll take a while to replenish my “geek toys” fund, but it’s definitely worth it.
Heh – and I get a copy of Comic Life with it. That’ll be fun to play with…
Rhonabwy 