What do you think, should I buy in the next 2 months or wait another 8-10 for leopard and new models?
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Macbook Pro: Buy or wait?
- Thread starter solafekxela
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solafekxela said:
I would buy within the next two months, but I guess it depends on how badly you need a new computer.
solafekxela said:
### popular wisdom is..buy it when you need it. *I* am probably going to wait until late Spring 07 to buy a MBP. Why? cuz my G4 PB is handling my animation stuff 'ok' and in 2Q 07, I'll know(hopefully) what Autodesk is doing with a UB version of Maya...and we'll have Santa Rosa (800mhz FSB), etc. and Leopard. Regardless...the MBP... with merom will be a very sweet machine...and would be a VERY nice upgrade over my G4 PB. The point of this is...each person's situation is unique.
Edit: Don't buy now! Just to be clear...wait for merom for sure. Probably waiting no more than 5-14 days. Also...the MB and MBP lines have had a lot of problems. Let the first few weeks of availability come and go...watching for feedback, etc...then bite. The merom chip doesn't require new boards or anything...so there shouldn't be any new kinks added in the process of the upgrade.
With the exception of the MacPro, I would say wait a few weeks before purchasing any Apple computer.
As you can see, we recommend a holding pattern on any machines running the
Yonah Core Duo 32 bit processors.
minis, MacBooks, MacBook Pros and iMacs are all running the first generation
of Intel Core Duo processors.
Intel is officially launching "Core Duo 2" next week and Apple is holding their Paris Expo Sept 12th.
So informed speculation says wait if you can.
Leopard will be backward compatible to PPC and 32Bit Intel processors, but
I would hold out for 64 bit Core Duo 2 at the very least.
It's difficult to give advice without knowing what you plan to do with your system.
It may be much smarter for you to buy conservative now getting completely
familiar with OSX and then spend some serious money after the Core Wars
dust settles a bit. I'm thinking 2008ish
I'm buying MacBooks now because they are more than enough computer for everything my girls will need for the next 3 years.
I'm buying refurbs because they are bench tested, pristine and fully warranteed.
That gives me 2 damn sweet little machines ( and 2 happy daughters ) for $2198.00 , with enough left over to buy them 1 Gb of 3rd party RAM and a case.
Even at the best education prices, they also need software.
Dad's Tacoma also needs new tires :-(
The smart buy is the machine that more than handles your needs at a price you can really afford.
If image is important for presentations, get the 2.0 GHz Blackbook outfitted with
2 GB RAM, optional DVI to DVI and DVI-VGA cables. iWork with Keynote and MS Office for Mac. $1299.00 refurbished.
The Macbooks make it easier to upgrade RAM and HD's and the 13" WS display
is quite sufficient for most tasks and highly portable.
Unless you need a Pro Audio/Video/Scientific Workstation, the MacBooks are
" enough computer " without going off the deep end.
If you need a serious Workstation, buy a Mac Pro and get a MacBook to handle you primary portable needs.
I'm more conservative than others here about the users true portable needs.
For some people, the Desktop Replacement MBP Note Book is the only solution.
To me, notebooks are a necessary convenience, but they are also fragile and you pay a tremendous premium for portability.
While portability may be necessary, a top of the line note book may not be
the most practical solution.
Wait through Paris Expo and see how things look in a few weeks.
Yonah Core Duo 32 bit processors.
minis, MacBooks, MacBook Pros and iMacs are all running the first generation
of Intel Core Duo processors.
Intel is officially launching "Core Duo 2" next week and Apple is holding their Paris Expo Sept 12th.
So informed speculation says wait if you can.
Leopard will be backward compatible to PPC and 32Bit Intel processors, but
I would hold out for 64 bit Core Duo 2 at the very least.
It's difficult to give advice without knowing what you plan to do with your system.
It may be much smarter for you to buy conservative now getting completely
familiar with OSX and then spend some serious money after the Core Wars
dust settles a bit. I'm thinking 2008ish
I'm buying MacBooks now because they are more than enough computer for everything my girls will need for the next 3 years.
I'm buying refurbs because they are bench tested, pristine and fully warranteed.
That gives me 2 damn sweet little machines ( and 2 happy daughters
) for $2198.00 , with enough left over to buy them 1 Gb of 3rd party RAM and a case.Even at the best education prices, they also need software.
Dad's Tacoma also needs new tires :-(
The smart buy is the machine that more than handles your needs at a price you can really afford.
If image is important for presentations, get the 2.0 GHz Blackbook outfitted with
2 GB RAM, optional DVI to DVI and DVI-VGA cables. iWork with Keynote and MS Office for Mac. $1299.00 refurbished.
The Macbooks make it easier to upgrade RAM and HD's and the 13" WS display
is quite sufficient for most tasks and highly portable.
Unless you need a Pro Audio/Video/Scientific Workstation, the MacBooks are
" enough computer " without going off the deep end.
If you need a serious Workstation, buy a Mac Pro and get a MacBook to handle you primary portable needs.
I'm more conservative than others here about the users true portable needs.
For some people, the Desktop Replacement MBP Note Book is the only solution.
To me, notebooks are a necessary convenience, but they are also fragile and you pay a tremendous premium for portability.
While portability may be necessary, a top of the line note book may not be
the most practical solution.
Wait through Paris Expo and see how things look in a few weeks.
Alag28 said:
How would a first generation Merom powered laptop be worse than a first generation Yonah based laptop?
Thanks
Thanks for the advice,
I don't need the MBP until next spring at the latest, but I would definately prefer to have it sooner. Sounds like in about a month, the time will be right.
Actually, now I'm thinking I might get a Macbook. I'll mostly just need it for basic stuff but will need to do some advanced editing with Final Cut. Any more advice?
Thanks for the advice,
I don't need the MBP until next spring at the latest, but I would definately prefer to have it sooner. Sounds like in about a month, the time will be right.
Actually, now I'm thinking I might get a Macbook. I'll mostly just need it for basic stuff but will need to do some advanced editing with Final Cut. Any more advice?
dmw007 said:How would a first generation Merom powered laptop be worse than a first generation Yonah based laptop?
how would buying a 1 week build memron with high tendencies to have kinks and hardware/software errors better than saving a headache on a already awesome machine macbook/macbook pro with excess power to do whatever u want (as a student like me that is that will be using office apps most of the time and internet surfing)
dats the better question!!
Alag28 said:
Firstly, its not Memron. It's Merom and it always has been.
Secondly, why would a processor like the Merom have kinks? Did the iMac Core Duo have kinks when it debuted with the Yonah? No. Try to do a little research next time.
BlizzardBomb said:Firstly, its not Memron. It's Merom and it always has been.
Secondly, why would a processor like the Merom have kinks? Did the iMac Core Duo have kinks when it debuted with the Yonah? No. Try to do a little research next time.
wth are u talking about? i said high tendencies!! not a fact that it will have problems.? buying any product when it first debuts is always a gamble.
how bout u tell me why "merom" wont have any problems when i comes out? wha makes u so sure?
pianoman said:
I agree about buying now. Either buy now or wait till next year. Probably depends on what you do...if your a low end user then merom wont make a difference to you. If your going to use it for video editing etc then wait
I've said it in other threads, and I'm going to say it here. I think the wait for a Merom upgrade is a little weird. Speedwise, real world tests show something like a 5-15% improvement. The 64bit thing is easy to overstate too. All it really means is a few extra registers and a whole lot more addressable RAM. If you're worried about how many registers you have then stick with PowerPC. Addressable RAM is the main thing.
32 bit processors can only handle a total of 4 GB. Inevitably the system is going to start wanting more than that (in much the same was as people consider 1 GB about the comfortable minimum for running the OS nowadays, when ten years ago people probably would have said 128 MB for similar comfort) and before too long individual apps are going to want more than that. Because of the way virtual memory is handled on modern OSs, it isn't even really possible to pretend there is more RAM. But the current MacBooks are limited to 2 GB total anyway, and that's unlikely to change with a Merom revision.
My tip is wait for as long as you don't need a new machine, but as suggested above keep your eye on the Apple Refurb Store. I had budgeted to get a MacBook this month or next and was half-waiting to see when a refresh would come. Instead I bought a refurb MacBook Pro just this week (hasn't even been delivered yet). The "old" 2 Ghz machine (i.e. pre-speed bump, same as the current 2 Ghz machine but with 1 GB RAM in a single SO-DIMM, the 100 GB HDD option and 256 MB of VRAM) is currently available at 30% off its original price and less than £100 more than the regular MacBook equipped with the same speed CPU, same size/speed hard disk and amount of RAM (and as two SO-DIMMs in the MacBook, so more expensive to upgrade). It's about £3 less than the equivalent black MacBook.
I think that the clamour of Apple rumour sites combined with the oxygen of Intel's very public and PR'd road map gives a very warped idea about the sense of purchases. Sudden cut offs in support and usefulness of older Macintoshes are very rare, and if we see one in the next few years it's going to be dropping support for PowerPC. And judging by the 68k timeline, that won't be for half a decade.
I think it's funny because the people that actually care enough about performance to really be bothered by exactly which side of a particular refresh they are on are probably the same people that are going to ditch the hardware long before it becomes unusable by anybody else's standards anyway.
32 bit processors can only handle a total of 4 GB. Inevitably the system is going to start wanting more than that (in much the same was as people consider 1 GB about the comfortable minimum for running the OS nowadays, when ten years ago people probably would have said 128 MB for similar comfort) and before too long individual apps are going to want more than that. Because of the way virtual memory is handled on modern OSs, it isn't even really possible to pretend there is more RAM. But the current MacBooks are limited to 2 GB total anyway, and that's unlikely to change with a Merom revision.
My tip is wait for as long as you don't need a new machine, but as suggested above keep your eye on the Apple Refurb Store. I had budgeted to get a MacBook this month or next and was half-waiting to see when a refresh would come. Instead I bought a refurb MacBook Pro just this week (hasn't even been delivered yet). The "old" 2 Ghz machine (i.e. pre-speed bump, same as the current 2 Ghz machine but with 1 GB RAM in a single SO-DIMM, the 100 GB HDD option and 256 MB of VRAM) is currently available at 30% off its original price and less than £100 more than the regular MacBook equipped with the same speed CPU, same size/speed hard disk and amount of RAM (and as two SO-DIMMs in the MacBook, so more expensive to upgrade). It's about £3 less than the equivalent black MacBook.
I think that the clamour of Apple rumour sites combined with the oxygen of Intel's very public and PR'd road map gives a very warped idea about the sense of purchases. Sudden cut offs in support and usefulness of older Macintoshes are very rare, and if we see one in the next few years it's going to be dropping support for PowerPC. And judging by the 68k timeline, that won't be for half a decade.
I think it's funny because the people that actually care enough about performance to really be bothered by exactly which side of a particular refresh they are on are probably the same people that are going to ditch the hardware long before it becomes unusable by anybody else's standards anyway.
Alag28 said:
As far as I know, Merom is a compatible replacement for existing Yonah hardware- sticking a compatible processor into already reliable hardware does not seek that risky to me.
JMies419 said:Merom may be nice to have over Yonah..just because it is NEWER. But I think the main reason to wait for the merom is to simply see if Apple is going to re-design the MBP case design, fix airport problems, so on and so on.
....64bit capabilities, which would come in handy with leopard
Thomas Harte said:
### You make interesting points, but for me...doing 3d..merom's performance advantages are pretty significant over yonah (see Anandtech.com). Also, it would be VERY nice to be able to run Leopard next spring in 64bit. Yonah is obviously 32bit. Regardless, I'm pretty sure I'm waiting until santa rosa...
Just to be clear though...the MBs and MBPs coming off the lines now seem to have the most significant issues fixed..and I think it's a very good machine. The current yonah MBP would run circles around my PB G4!
I chose to wait till after sept. 5th but will be buying one within the next month. I am going to be using this for work. I would just wait till after sept. 5th if nothing happens with the macbook pros then you have wasted nothing whats another two weeks
Alag28 said:
###Sorry...not following your "logic". Merom is, in reality, the revB because the only thing changing is the chip. Yonah is revA..and it is crystal clear these revA machines *had* problems. Those problems were not caused by the Yonah chip itself..make sense? Is it possible the merom chips will explode on boot up? uh yea, i guess...but pretty unlikely.
Thomas Harte said:
Even if Merom isn't a huge improvement, waiting for it will mean (1) option to pick up the old Yonah for cheaper, or (2) having a higher resale value on the Merom. So performance-wise, while it won't be too significant for a lot of the people waiting (assuming GPU doesn't get upgraded), it's financially sensible to wait a week.
Yeah, I agree with this.
If I didn't enjoy gaming, I would probably be able to keep my computers for way longer. But having something bleeding fast and shiny... not healthy for my wallet