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Hi everyone, New to the Mac scene so i have a couple of questions if people have the time.

I'm going to America for holidays in May, and so wanting to buy a macbook and save a bit of money on the exchange rate from here in the UK. Would the new specs of macbooks be in the stores at this point and furthermore, what would people recommend? I was thinking of the 13" macbook pro but maybe tempted to go for the 15" if people recommend it.

Thanks.

I'm pretty sure the new macs are in shops within a day of being available online. Not sure if they do it they do it the same day in the UK cos they tend to come out around 2pm GMT, (I'd like to know myself actually, cos they can't very well change the display models at lunch time and you'd be pretty annoyed to learn you got an old mac at the mac store 3 hours after they announced new ones, without getting a discount). Whatever happens, it definitely won't take 3 months.

No one can tell you the relative merits of the 13-inch to the 15-inch until they know how apple divides up the processors and gfx card options across the product line. Sometimes, the MBP is barely worth the extra over the white macbook, currently the 15-inch MBP is probably not worth the extra over the 13-inch, since anyone who needs a gfx card would probably want the 512MB VRAM model and that's almost twice the price of the baseline 13 inch.
 
yay the store is down !

please please please new MBP. have been waiting for a reason to refresh my 4yr old one.
 
Would be good if they squeezed in a good videocard in the new models. And give 512 MB VRAM on the 15'' as default. But knowing Apple, hm... I feel like an oracle.
 
I think my MBP 1.83 (March 2006) held on long enough... bring it on!

I wonder whether they'll be ready to ship immediately. What is the trend usually with MBP updates?
 
The Apple Store is Closed for Updates!

Check out the Apple site - the store is closed for updates!
 
Totally. I have held out for 3 years waiting for a quad core laptop with bluray, but my iMac has died and now I have to buy one even though I'm more certain now that this MBP revision will have neither quad-core nor bluray than I have been for about 4 revisions.

Never in all the time I have been following Apple have they held out on including a feature as long as bluray. Being a year or two behind your rivals damages the perceived value of a machine far more than denying half your "pro" line a dedicated gfx card so you can cut the prices a little could ever possibly compensate for.

Hopefully, in a couple of revisions, MBPs will have quad-core, bluray, light peak, usb3, fw3200 etc., across the board and then they won't seem such poor value, but not this year.

Amen to that. I'd love to upgrade my 2007 SR MBP, but not until they integrate quad-cores, Blu-Ray and Light Peak or USB 3.0. Without these things, the MBPs simply wouldn't be viable long-term investments.
I've actually eyed the Vaio F-series yesterday - I'd never switch back to Windows, but Apple could seriously take a page out of Sony's book when it comes to media capabilities: Full HD 16 inch screen, Blu-Ray, 8 GB RAM Standard, Quad-Core... Next-gen connectivity is the only thing that's missing. Bring it on, Apple.
 
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