About to buy a new laptop, which MacBook to get?

[ben333]

Well, I sold my Mac Mini and now I'll be needing a new system, I figured I'd go mobile. To give you an idea of how quickly I'll be buying the new laptop, I'm now posting this from a ThinkPad 390X (450 MHz, 128 MB RAM) and although it's totally mint and has a new battery I'm glad it's just a backup for email and surfing the net.

So... here's my situation, I bought my Mini for a very reasonable price and fell in love with Snow Leopard, especially without the Mac OS having to run as either a half assed hackintosh install or on an old PPC G3 / G4. Snow Leopard on an apple branded intel machine feels great for me, so I'd like to stick with it. When I first thought about a new laptop I was going to get one for like $300. It would be wide screen, wireless N, rip DVDs, have 2 GB of RAM and a 250 gig HDD. Not too shabby at all, an of course, since it's new - good battery life. BUT, Macs run OS 10.6, look great, feel great, and seem to have great resale value, especially when you sell it before the next gen rolls in.

So as far as a new Mac goes, the 13" MBP looks great, it's thin, looks and feels great and has decent specs, HOWEVER it is a C2D unlike the new 15" and 17" models. If I buy a 13 is apple going to release it in an Core i version in the coming months and make my purchase a dumb one? I mean, I don't really want to blow $1700 on a laptop, but for a wide screen and an i5 should I? Also, the 13" retails for $1200, but someone locally has one in near mint shape he's only owned for 3 months - he'll let it go for $900.

Of all the models, and the used option I have, which should I take? TBH, I'd love the 17" but it's so damn expensive.

Any input it welcome, I'm probably too stubborn to be pointed to another brand, but I am pretty fond of ThinkPads. Gotta have my OS X though.

[zanzabar]

if u are going for the 13" make sure that u get one without an an NV chipset as the 9400 likes to die, u want the intel p45 or g45, i forgot what prefix it is. and i would wait if u care about resale as the sandy bridge revamp should come out in the next for months for the whole line of pro and non pro 15-17 mostlikely the 13" and maybe the air also.

and have u tried windows7 recently, u can get a windows laptop with better specs than the pro for about $800-900 and u can get start bar mods that will mimic the dock but then u get the comparability and relative openness of windows and being able to easily change ram and HDDs

[ben333]

Ehh I'm still thinking about it. But anyway, Is a 3 month old 13" MBP retailing for $1200 a good deal for $900?

[shoota]

i'm confused. you say you like the thinness of the 13" but you would like to have the 17". Do you realize how big a 17" laptop is?!? i wouldn't call it mobile...

i have a 13" mbp that i got for $417 so it was an easy decision. but if i were in your spot $900 would be too much for a c2d laptop at this point. the i5's and upcoming sandy bridge cpus will make for wonderful laptops.

the big question is how long can you wait?

[tbone8ty]

wait for sandybridge macbooks

[Aphex_Tom_9]

I dont think SB macbooks and MBPS will be out soon.
I could be wrong, but it's been a little more than half a year since the i3/5/7 mac's came out, and I don't think they're about to jump to a new architecture that fast.
Look at how long it took the i-series to show up in macs to begin with. I waited months for my 15" i7 MBP (which I love), I knew it was coming because it had been so long since they refreshed the architecture.

[ben333]

The decision is really kicking my ass... Is 900 a good price on this one? He also has a WD SSD 64 GB for $50 more which includes the original 250 gig

[ben333]

Bought it for $850 cash, no SSD in the deal, guy said he "forgot" it. I'd say I didn't do too bad, I can always pop this on ebay before the next gen rolls in and get my money back... and I actually like it a lot!

[shoota]

Congrats its a great laptop. I love mine

[ben333]

It's very nice... I'm even more impressed with the build quality now that I've owned to for a couple days. Here it is next to my old ThinkPad:

[shoota]

just make sure it's well ventilated if you do anything cpu intensive for an extended period of time. they run HOT

[Kurumi]

Baller Windows 2000 Pro.

You'll love your 13" MBP. Congrats.

[ben333]

Just an update, I've been loving this thing. It's amazing how well PPC games run with rosetta, like UT2003. Half Life 2 (intel) also runs great at max res... it's the most comfortable laptop I've ever used and very fast. Love the multi touch features, I miss them when using other laptops. Between this and my hackintosh I'm pretty much a mac user now lol.

[shoota]

shh.. don't say that too loud around these parts. the bandwagon-jumping, apple-hating, anti-fanboy fanboys will give you a good ol' pimply-faced, voice-cracklin' tongue lashing


Glad you like your MB Pro. I love mine too. Can't say I agree on having an Apple desktop though