A bit of confusion

Leopard is expected sometime between March and July. It's more of an evolutionary upgrade -- perhaps slightly more major than a version upgrade of most Linux distributions and more major than the jump from XP to XP/SP2, but less of a shift than the XP/SP2 to Vista jump. It adds a number of new features, such as the Time Machine backup system.

It's also only the second major release of OS X with public / official support of Core processors and the first major release of OS X with support for GUI programs running in 64-bit (it's not expected that there will be much of this at all for several years).

It is likely to cost $129 or $69 for educational users in the US.

Tiger is great -- it has Spotlight, Dashboard, and lots of other goodies. Leopard promises to have a number of goodies. At the moment, I am less excited about Tiger -> Leopard than I was about Panther -> Tiger (Spotlight really changed my life!). But it will be a fun new OS.

So the basic answer is that if you buy now, you will need to either pay for or forego Leopard. But Tiger is great. So if you need/want/can make use of the MBP now, just go for it.

 

I'd say no, if you wait for Leopard, then when that comes out you'll probably be a couple months away from a MBP line upgrade.
Sucks though, I'm in the same boat as you, but I'm gonna pull the trigger on it next week.

 

Unless you really need to own one right now I would wait another few months until Macbook pros come shipped with Leopard. But then again if you are paying $1000+ for a new laptop, what's another $130 down the line? It's not like you have to upgrade to leopard anyway.

Also, I might be wrong but if Leopard gets released within a month of your purchase you will get the upgrade for free. But I could be wrong on the exact amount of time they allow.

Don't forget every new OS might have its share of bugs to work out, so getting Leopard on day 1 might not be the most stable option for your new mac experience.