Worth the £350 ($610) for the "better" Macbook Pro anymore?

Considering its $110 cheaper for people in the US. I would say yes. It comes with one stick of 1 GB ram which makes it easy to upgrade when the time comes.

The 256 MB of VRAM will last you longer in the years to come when it comes to pro apps that need the extra boost. I expect at some point 256 will become the standard, like 128 is now.

I also think the 1.83 to 2.0 boost will speed performance. I guess its comparable to getting a 800mhz G4 Powerbook when they were still selling the lower model 667 mhz.

In the end its really up to you, but since laptops aren't easily upgradable, and are also very expensive, I would tend to try and make it last as long as possible by pwning it with upgrades, but thats just me.

But you know, now that Apple is doing more common updates, which was just proven in the case of this very laptop, if it would ever fail in the logic board area, with Applecare of course in 2 years or so, you would probably get an updated system anyways. I guess thats the convenient thing about switching to Intel. When my logic board went in my iBook G3, which I am actually still using to type this, I got back the same thing I ordered 2 years prior, a G3 700 with 16 VRAM. I was mostly disappointed with the 16 VRAM.