MBP 13" Questions

No one knows if the MBP is approaching the end of a "cycle," whatever that means. There have been rumors of a new case design, but that's it. Intel's next generation chips, Ivy Bridge, won't be out until late this year/early next year, and it's unlikely the MBP would be changed before Ivy Bridge comes out. Not impossible, but unlikely.

It's a piece of cake to upgrade the user-serviceable parts on a MBP--which are the RAM and HD. Any compatible part will work--no need to spend extra for "Mac Certified," etc., parts.

As far as resolution goes, I prefer the superior color of the MBP to the higher resolution of the MBA. Your mileage may vary. Also note that the Air cannot be upgraded, so if you want to run Parallels or run VMs the MBP is the better choice.

Finally, Lion is OK but seems to be a bit buggy, so I'm holding off for the .1 release.

 

Even though the MBA has a higher resolution screen, the quality is still much, much better on the MBP.

Upgrading any MBP is really easy, especially the RAM and HDD. Optibay is a little more complicated if you want to add a second hard drive in place of the SuperDrive, but even thats not too difficult.

Lion is running on my MBP, without too many bugs or glitches. I think the Lion features outweigh the minor bugs it currently has. One complaint I have is that the battery life is a tad bit worse with Lion than on Snow Leopard. But I'm sure the updates to come will keep that in mind as well.

Personally, I totally recommend the MBP over the MBA. The MBA is a fine computer, but the MBP has more power and practicality that the MBA may not offer in some instances. The MBP is a lot cheaper too, only $999 from Micro Center, which Best Buy will price match for you.

Link:http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0358117

 

You can ask, but I think the people that have tried this have been denied. If you ask them to match the Apple education price with the $100 card, it might work. What does it hurt to ask?

Just get it now.

 

Go do yourself a favor and get one. You'll be thinking about it more than you should if you don't.

 

Definitely get one. The RAM/HD is easy to install; I would suggest getting the baseline and just upgrading when you need to upgrade.

No sense upgrading now when it's just going to get cheaper in the future.