I wouldn't count on it.......
Panther is too far away. At best, its 2 months away, but more realistically, its gonna be more like 5 months. Steve said it would be available at the end of the year, and he would have said "end of summer" if he had meant it. Remember when Jaguar beta was released, Apple said the final version would be available at the end of summer, and it was. Following that logic and what Steve said, I imagine it won't be out till Nov/Dec, and that would mean if you bought a new mac now, you'd probably pay full price for panther when its released.