Full Laptop Refresh By Holidays?

[sblasl]

When Adobe releases CS3, will it be 64-Bit? I am not software development savvy, is the creation of 64-Bit software anymore cumbersome for developers than creating current Universal Binary software? There are a lot of folks out there that create really nice applications, they in many cases, are not full time software developers, is it just a matter of recompiling their applications?

What type of applications should & need to be 64-Bit compliant?

 

[Multimedia]

Twice As Much RAM For Frequently Requested Items

can you explain exactly how much diff 4MB shared L2 cache means to the non-hardware-savvy

if it isn't such a big deal i'll prolly go for the low-end one since i prolly won't need the low-quality dvd burner. i'll just use my nano to transfer files to my PC to burn.

Double the RAM for frequently accessed items that stay in that cache. i.e. should feel and be a lot faster.

 

[poppe]

No. Speed Bumped Means 2.33GHz With New Ventilation System & HD Bay. Anyone who thinks it's only going to be a speed bump is unfamiliar with the heat problems in the existing line.Oh and what he said. I am super duper proud of you Uma. And I love your movies too.

See I dream of a redesign, but I just couldn't see it really happening. Maybe doing some re engineering to keep it cool. My guess is only the mag latch, and the HDD bay... but even then I think thats being optomistic...

I seriously doubt that Apple would trash the anodized aluminum design anytime soon. It is seriously cool. If anything, they will have MBP's with a black anodized finish.

I have to say, I'd pay alot of money for this...

 

[akadmon]

Actually, given Dell's past practices and the fact that C2D is going in their lower end laptops, not their high-end ones [...].

You are the second person who's said in this thread that C2D are not going in the "higher-end" Dells. Have you actually been to the Dell website? All the XPS machines are C2D, as are the business oriented Latitudes. Sheesh.

On a related note, my dad came over today from Chicago with his new Inspiron. Man -- that is one clunky looking laptop!

 

[CoffeeMonkey]

This may just be random, but...


You know how at the Apple Store, next to each laptop there is a plastic holder that holds the card that has the specs and the price? Well, I was at the stoer in Old Orchard today, and a bunch of them had big blue cardboard cirlces that said "NEW" attached to them.

When I asked the salespeople what exactly was new about the laptops, they said "nothing". They were defintely the last generations MB and MBPs, so I wonder is someone jumped the gun in setting up the displays.

 

[JackSYi]

This may just be random, but...


You know how at the Apple Store, next to each laptop there is a plastic holder that holds the card that has the specs and the price? Well, I was at the stoer in Old Orchard today, and a bunch of them had big blue cardboard cirlces that said "NEW" attached to them.

When I asked the salespeople what exactly was new about the laptops, they said "nothing". They were defintely the last generations MB and MBPs, so I wonder is someone jumped the gun in setting up the displays.

Any pictures?

 

[Multimedia]

Sounds Like Tuesday

This may just be random, but...

You know how at the Apple Store, next to each laptop there is a plastic holder that holds the card that has the specs and the price? Well, I was at the stoer in Old Orchard today, and a bunch of them had big blue cardboard cirlces that said "NEW" attached to them.

When I asked the salespeople what exactly was new about the laptops, they said "nothing". They were defintely the last generations MB and MBPs, so I wonder is someone jumped the gun in setting up the displays.

That sounds like Tuesday.

 

[AppliedVisual]

When I asked the salespeople what exactly was new about the laptops, they said "nothing". They were defintely the last generations MB and MBPs, so I wonder is someone jumped the gun in setting up the displays.

...Or they're several months behind with the original "new" MBP display.

 

[rand0m3r]

This may just be random, but...


You know how at the Apple Store, next to each laptop there is a plastic holder that holds the card that has the specs and the price? Well, I was at the stoer in Old Orchard today, and a bunch of them had big blue cardboard cirlces that said "NEW" attached to them.

When I asked the salespeople what exactly was new about the laptops, they said "nothing". They were defintely the last generations MB and MBPs, so I wonder is someone jumped the gun in setting up the displays.

probably shouldn't overanalyze this.

i got a feeling that appleinsider are on the ball with this one and it's gonna be early november. hope so anyway.

 

[poppe]

I can live with soon. The dell monitor 30" is 1299 right now!! sweet... Will the MBP run the dell monitor well? I know the 17" has the dual DVI but I was just curious if i'd see lag and what not.

Also does the 30" have component and composite video imputs?

Sorry not to get off topic

 

[Detektiv-Pinky]

Double the RAM for frequently accessed items that stay in that cache. i.e. should feel and be a lot faster.

While having 4MB instead of 2 MB processor cache is nice, I do not think that it makes that much of a difference in overall system performance. If you are going to encode audio and video than it is the hard-disk and memory speed combined with the execution efficiency of the processor and not the cache size that determines the speed of the system.
AMD for example uses comparatively small processor caches and is still able to have resonable performance results.

I think a 1.6 Merom would have about the same benchmark results than a 1.83 Yonah (which for most task would be fast enough anyway - not talking PRO-usage here) and would give you the chance to work all day on the machine without carrying your wall-wart with you.

 

[bobber205]

I can live with soon. The dell monitor 30" is 1299 right now!! sweet... Will the MBP run the dell monitor well? I know the 17" has the dual DVI but I was just curious if i'd see lag and what not.

Also does the 30" have component and composite video imputs?

Sorry not to get off topic

A monitor for that much better have both.

 

[AppliedVisual]

Unfortunately, like the Apple 30", the *ONLY* input is dual-link DVI. The MBP drives it just fine, the Macbook can't. I bought a second 30" display last week... Mine was $1349, which is still a great deal and I got one with no dead/stuck pixels... Dell must be clearing them out to make way for an updated model. Anyway, I like these Dell 30" monitors better than the Apple ones and they're a lot cheaper.

The Dell monitors do have a USB 2 hub and memory card reader built-in. Apple builds a USB and firewire hub into theirs.

 

[AppliedVisual]

"What it didn't say was how many of those Core 2 Duo processors were of the Merom mobile variant as opposed to the Conroe desktop variant."

Sooo, are the C2D processors in the Imac Merom or Conroe? And what exactly makes them different?

The iMac uses Merom. I think it's very strange that Apple does not have a mid-range offering using Conroe. I've said it before and I'll say it again... Bring back the cube! Give the buyer the choice of a single CPU with either dual or quad cores. It would fit nicely in the gap between the iMac and Mac Pro. Also strange is that a system like the 24" iMac, with its desktop variant GPU and whatnot seems like it should be based on Conroe rather than Merom. Given the video options, they had a different logic board for it vs. the other iMacs, so why did the essentially cheat the buyer out of a little more horsepower? Plenty of space inside that 24" model for proper cooling too.

 

[macman2790]

The iMac uses Merom. I think it's very strange that Apple does not have a mid-range offering using Conroe. I've said it before and I'll say it again... Bring back the cube! Give the buyer the choice of a single CPU with either dual or quad cores. It would fit nicely in the gap between the iMac and Mac Pro. Also strange is that a system like the 24" iMac, with its desktop variant GPU and whatnot seems like it should be based on Conroe rather than Merom. Given the video options, they had a different logic board for it vs. the other iMacs, so why did the essentially cheat the buyer out of a little more horsepower? Plenty of space inside that 24" model for proper cooling too.

i've always wondered the same thing on why they didn't put conroe in the 24" model or create a new product line or bring back the cube. I think it would be great if apple had something in between the imac and the macpro. It would easily bring more switchers since pc users are used to the look of a tower model. Also it would most likely be affordable.

 

[poppe]

Unfortunately, like the Apple 30", the *ONLY* input is dual-link DVI. The MBP drives it just fine, the Macbook can't. I bought a second 30" display last week... Mine was $1349, which is still a great deal and I got one with no dead/stuck pixels... Dell must be clearing them out to make way for an updated model. Anyway, I like these Dell 30" monitors better than the Apple ones and they're a lot cheaper.

The Dell monitors do have a USB 2 hub and memory card reader built-in. Apple builds a USB and firewire hub into theirs.

Wait... so the 24 inch has component and composite... but the 30 doesn't well thats a joke... Guess i'm getting the 24 then... and I was so excited...

The iMac uses Merom. I think it's very strange that Apple does not have a mid-range offering using Conroe. I've said it before and I'll say it again... Bring back the cube! Give the buyer the choice of a single CPU with either dual or quad cores. It would fit nicely in the gap between the iMac and Mac Pro. Also strange is that a system like the 24" iMac, with its desktop variant GPU and whatnot seems like it should be based on Conroe rather than Merom. Given the video options, they had a different logic board for it vs. the other iMacs, so why did the essentially cheat the buyer out of a little more horsepower? Plenty of space inside that 24" model for proper cooling too.

Or get rid of the cube and have a Pro Cube and just a cube. The mini is alright and all... but I'd like a nice cube with more features and what not... for the price of the mini and then a cube between the MP and the iMac

 

[Glenny2lappies]

I have suffered in the hands of Microsoft enough already....

Windows is a product that should be put out of it's misery and terminated for good....

It is - Vistaaaaarrrrrrggggghhhhh - let the nightmare continue with even more bloat.

 

[Westside guy]

You are the second person who's said in this thread that C2D are not going in the "higher-end" Dells. Have you actually been to the Dell website? All the XPS machines are C2D, as are the business oriented Latitudes. Sheesh.

Uh, yeah. I went there before I posted that, or my previous post about Dell. I've also had a fair bit of experience with Dells over the past six years, both personally and through work.

The base XPS cost $1151 (edu price, where I was looking since I'm an edu customer). Those are not by any stretch of any reasonable person's imagination high-end laptops, and they almost certainly have a desktop processor in them rather than the mobile version. Dell has, for the past several years, made some big honkin' laptops that are low priced and have pretty fast desktop processors in them. It's not exactly a secret. We've got a few of them around our department that have P4 egg-fryer 3GHz (roughly) chips in them. You don't want one on your lap, trust me!

The Latitudes have historically been Dell's higher end lappies. On the Latitude page, where I'd been before, it shows three core duo laptops and two Pentium M laptops - doesn't say anything about C2D. However, once I enabled Flash I did see that I could upgrade the D820 to a C2D... for a premium of > $600 if I want the 2.33GHz chip! So at that point I'm looking at $2500 already (and that's the EDU price); and I still only have a 40GB hard drive, a 24x CD-ROM (a CD-ROM!) and integrated Intel graphics.

So with the Latitudes you can get a C2D, you are correct - but it's not the base configuration, and it seems pretty obvious the pricing is tiered to discourage you from getting said chip. Also, looking at Dell's pricing I suspect we unfortunately won't be seeing C2D in a MBP for a while...

 

[Manic Mouse]

I'm still going to reserve judgment on whether Apple's pricing points are 'fair' until I see the full line-up of new models that should come with the holidays. If the new MBPs are really just portable iMacs with an extra premium tacked on to them for the 'Pro' denominator, then I may rethink my decision to go for a pro laptop in the future, but I can't see Apple doing that to their 'flagship' laptop. It would be nice to have a few more customization options, but it seems that battle is usually lost with Apple.

Up until now that's exactly the reason why I haven't even considered buying a MBP. If I desperately needed a GPU then I'd rather buy an iMac and save myself a load of cash than pay through the nose for the same components in a MBP. It just seems to me that MBP's are very unreasonably priced compared to iMacs when they are essentially the same machine, except for portability.

I predict that the new MBP's will be slightly different from the standard iMacs in that they will use MXM GPUs (like the 24" iMac). The AMD buyout will probably mean that Apple want to distance themselves from ATI, and the 7XXX series of GPU's from Nvidia are cooler than equivalent ATI GPUs. By using MXM Apple will be able to easily offer many different GPU options like the Mac Pro.

 

[danvdr]

Wireless monitors?

This is slightly off topic, but I was wondering is 802.11n going to be fast enough to run a monitor wirelessly (even just a 17" or 20")?

 

[Detektiv-Pinky]

Someone posted on the 'Video iPod' thread that according to

http://www.apple-history.com/

there were only 4 products throughout the whole history of Apple that where introduced in November and absolutely none in December.

So, if there is no update soon we can pack our packs and leave this thread alone until January

 

[AppliedVisual]

Wait... so the 24 inch has component and composite... but the 30 doesn't well thats a joke... Guess i'm getting the 24 then... and I was so excited...

The 30" serves a different market. It has 2560x1600 native resolution, plenty of room for full HD image plus lots of other tools and windows, etc.. It wasn't designed to be a "TV". It's for DCC and CAD work... If you're looking for a large monitor with various inputs, have you considered one of the new Samsung 1080P LCD TVs? I know it's quite a bit more money, but they are awesome for both TV use and as a computer monitor. There's a few other companies out there that offer 27 to 32 inch monitors with other AV inputs - typically they have 1366x768 resolution, a few like the Westinghouse and Sceptre are also 1920x1080 or 1920x1200.

OTOH, the Dell 2407 is a very nice monitor! It's probably the best one out there right now at the 24" size.

 

[AppliedVisual]

This is slightly off topic, but I was wondering is 802.11n going to be fast enough to run a monitor wirelessly (even just a 17" or 20")?

Yes. Kinda... There's already a wireless HDMI product on the market for monitors/HDTV that supports up to 1080p using a customized version dual-band 802.11G. Unfortunately, the picture quality is just OK as there has to be a significant amount of signal compression. With 802.11n, the bandwidth available can be anywhere from about 180Mbps to 440Mbps depending on the implementation, range and environment. the "N" spec is still not finalized and there's a lot of debate over just how consistant the final version will be in terms of bandwidth. Either way, it's going to be more than double what we have now with "A" or the enhance/super "G" types. But with "N" there will still need to be data compression in order to transmit a full display image at any proper resolution. The wireless along with compression/decompression introduces lag and a shift in image quality with compression artifacts.

Why do you want to run wireless? You still have to plug the monitor into power anyway, just run a proper cable to it.

 

[Reverend Wally]

This is slightly off topic, but I was wondering is 802.11n going to be fast enough to run a monitor wirelessly (even just a 17" or 20")?

They can't even get the N series to run without bugs like crashing, freezing, refusing to log onto the internet, running at the lower speeds etc. Why worry about interfacing with monitors. They would most likely explode if connected to 802.11n at this time. Or maybe even catch your house on fire.

 

[danvdr]

Why do you want to run wireless? You still have to plug the monitor into power anyway, just run a proper cable to it.

Coolness factor, "640K should be enough for anybody", one less cable coming out of my laptop, convenience for presentations, "because it's there".