After several years, I'm posting to this thread again. Back in July 2012 I waited patiently for my new 15" rMBP. It's still my workhorse for working on the road and at client sites (I'm a consultant). It replaced an old 2008 MBP which was relegated to the kitchen table for checking email, reading the news, and watching an occasional video when eating breakfast. I didn't want to take a chance on spilling coffee on my work computer, and this old MBP still worked OK. Until recently. I'm just tired of waiting for the spinning lollipop to disappear whenever a web page loads up, and it has trouble finding my WiFi router. So, today I pulled the trigger on a late 2011 17" MBP with the 750GB HDD and 8GB RAM. I've always wanted one, and now that they're getting older, prices have dropped considerably. This one, in particular, I was able to get on Ebay for $725 plus shipping. In the fullness of time I'll probably swap out a new battery and install a 1 TB SDD and 16GB RAM, but for now I'm looking forward to reading the news over my cereal on a pretty 17" screen.
I know all about 'radeongate', but if that becomes a problem before next February, when the replacement campaign ends, it'll get a properly soldered GPU. Other than that, I'm ready to tear it apart and swap components as required to keep it running.