I have decided to postpone my purchase of a new Macbook Pro for another 3-4 months. I had a chat about this with several friends these past few days. The reasons?
Several actually. Here’s why:
As I’ve written before, I really (really!) dislike getting first-revision Mac products. They more often than not have either design or manufacturing issues. While the latest Macbook Pros are not radically new in terms of their design, they might have some manufacturing flaws, being new models and all. Just a few weeks after the release of MeromBook Pro, there seem to be some problems [1] with them. Living in Hellas makes repairs (and/or replacements) very difficult, so I’d rather not risk it.
Then there’s the lack of free time. I’m probably busier than anytime since 2004 and I need to finish my doctorate thesis so there’s little time to play around with a new laptop. While my busy schedule means a lot of my time is spent coding and doing I/O (i.e. reading and writing 🙂 ) on computers, I’d rather use my desktop setups instead of a 15″ MeromBook screen. My main development machines are much faster and much more comfortable to work with than the MeromBook, so there’s little need for additional CPU power. Moreover, I’m hardly using my laptop for any other CPU intensive task lately, hence I don’t need the extra processing power offered by the new Macbook Pros.
Finally, there’s Leopard. I’m relatively tight on money right now and I wouldn’t want to spend an additional $130 requested for Leopard when it comes out early next year when I can get it for free then with a new MBP.
All in all, it seems that cosmix’s eternal advice for Macheads still stands: don’t let Steve’s RDF and the aura of new gadgets rush you into getting an Apple product as soon as it is announced. The display and fan ‘reports’ may be affecting only few of the hundreds of thousands of C2D MBPs sold by Apple, but it’s a pain getting laptops repaired and/or replaced, especially if you’re depending on them to do work. Hmm, well, multiply that pain by 15 million times and you may come close to how bad it is if you’re living in Hellas.
March or April 2007 it is then for me! Well, depending on Leopard I guess 🙂
