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Waiting for Haswell MBP Mega Thread
- Thread starter thadoggfather
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This is where you, and most Dell non-believers go wrong. You're talking about their Home User lineup. That sucks.
Their Business Division on the other hand - specifically the Latitude 6xxx series and all Precision computers are the best computers out there. Combined with Dell excellent service, which I believe to be much much better than Apple's own, it is one of the best bargains you can get.
Latitudes and Precisions come with 3 year warranty. Unlike Apple, you don't have to be without a computer, most of the time they will send you the component to replace (free of charge) if you tell them that you can fix it.
If you get the next day on site warranty, their technician comes to your home/office the next day and fixes it for you right then and there. You are without a laptop for the few minutes/hours that the tech's fixing it.
And last but not the least, these machine are rock solid, that hold up extremely well over time. I have 10+ year old latitudes/precisions at work that run xp/windows 7 buttery smooth. My 3 year old Latitude E6510 is indistinguishable from new (and I abuse the hell out of it) and the WLED 1080p panel on it was one of the best contrast/brightness/color gamut panel on there.
Throw in one of the best keyboard/trackpad combos (despite it being smaller than macbooks') and a quad core (first gen) that can handle everything I can throw at it, I really regret handing it over to my dad.
I had upgraded the RAM to 8GB (1333 IIRC) for $45 and 500GB 7200RPM WD Black (Which I would upgrade to a Samsung Evo SSD $165 if I still had it).
All this for what? A princely sum of $800 (taxes included) from Dell Outlet.
It was bulky, but not as bulky as the precisions, and it gave me 3-3.5 hours of battery life with moderate usage with the 9 cell.
Yes, it was unbelievable. Unfortunately, Dell have changed a lot of things going forward from E6520 (and to the current E6540) which absolutely killed the line for me. I even wrote to Michael Dell and they got back to me saying they can help me choose something from the current line up etc.
Dell Marketing sucks huge balls, because despite making such unreal machines, people think they're junk. And you wonder why their sales are tanking.
BTW I'm not talking out of my ass, here's one review: http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Dell-Latitude-E6510-Notebook.32410.0.html
I'm in half a mind to buy dad another notebook and get this back from him. The Macbook air display has been a big step down for me coming from the Dell.
I know a lot of people are probably thinking, what a Dell Fanboy, well, you gotta know it to believe it.
That's the reason why I'm extremely excited about this (the n'th mention now)
http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/04/campaigns/precision-m3800-workstation
http://www.engadget.com/2013/07/25/dell-officially-unveils-precision-m3800-workstation-at-siggraph/
Yes, a QHD+ IGZO display.
This is where you, and most Dell non-believers go wrong. You're talking about their Home User lineup. That sucks.
Their Business Division on the other hand - specifically the Latitude 6xxx series and all Precision computers are the best computers out there. Combined with Dell excellent service, which I believe to be much much better than Apple's own, it is one of the best bargains you can get.
Latitudes and Precisions come with 3 year warranty. Unlike Apple, you don't have to be without a computer, most of the time they will send you the component to replace (free of charge) if you tell them that you can fix it.
If you get the next day on site warranty, their technician comes to your home/office the next day and fixes it for you right then and there. You are without a laptop for the few minutes/hours that the tech's fixing it.
And last but not the least, these machine are rock solid, that hold up extremely well over time. I have 10+ year old latitudes/precisions at work that run xp/windows 7 buttery smooth. My 3 year old Latitude E6510 is indistinguishable from new (and I abuse the hell out of it) and the WLED 1080p panel on it was one of the best contrast/brightness/color gamut panel on there.
Throw in one of the best keyboard/trackpad combos (despite it being smaller than macbooks') and a quad core (first gen) that can handle everything I can throw at it, I really regret handing it over to my dad.
I had upgraded the RAM to 8GB (1333 IIRC) for $45 and 500GB 7200RPM WD Black (Which I would upgrade to a Samsung Evo SSD $165 if I still had it).
All this for what? A princely sum of $800 (taxes included) from Dell Outlet.
It was bulky, but not as bulky as the precisions, and it gave me 3-3.5 hours of battery life with moderate usage with the 9 cell.
Yes, it was unbelievable. Unfortunately, Dell have changed a lot of things going forward from E6520 (and to the current E6540) which absolutely killed the line for me. I even wrote to Michael Dell and they got back to me saying they can help me choose something from the current line up etc.
Dell Marketing sucks huge balls, because despite making such unreal machines, people think they're junk. And you wonder why their sales are tanking.
BTW I'm not talking out of my ass, here's one review: http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Dell-Latitude-E6510-Notebook.32410.0.html
I'm in half a mind to buy dad another notebook and get this back from him. The Macbook air display has been a big step down for me coming from the Dell.
I know a lot of people are probably thinking, what a Dell Fanboy, well, you gotta know it to believe it.
That's the reason why I'm extremely excited about this (the n'th mention now)
http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/04/campaigns/precision-m3800-workstation
http://www.engadget.com/2013/07/25/dell-officially-unveils-precision-m3800-workstation-at-siggraph/
Yes, a QHD+ IGZO display.
It's great that you've had good experiences with Dell. I used to swear by them too. My first computers were all Dell. The Inspiron I bought in 2001 was of better quality than anything I bought from them after about 2006 though.
It was a horrible experience with their mobile workstation Precision M4400 in 2008 that finally pushed me over to the Mac full time. I see they haven't learned their lesson with the trackpad and buttons. I couldn't use that M4400 without a mouse.
Do I hear 9000?
All speculation aside, does anyone care to weigh in on why the MR community has chosen THIS refresh, of all possible MBP refreshes, to devote such an epic number of posts to?
I understand the "GPU Wars" accounts for a healthy percentage of them, but still, for a refresh that's widely expected to deliver only a nominal performance boost over the current model, it's pretty crazy how much virtual ink has been spilled on this topic. Maybe it's the early benchmark sightings, the fact that Haswell has been on the market in some form for several months already, and perhaps the "underwhelmingness" of a prospective update with potentially worse graphical performance in certain areas, which have combined to foster more debate than usual...?
For the record, I remember "Waiting for Arrandale", but don't remember an 8000-post thread. It's as though the frenzy of the Mac nerds is inversely proportional to the level of interest in Macs/OSX in the public at large. I guess we are feeling a need to overcompensate!
Haha You got us at 8000!
I think we all can reach consensus that we have not reached consensus about anything
Do I hear 9000?
All speculation aside, does anyone care to weigh in on why the MR community has chosen THIS refresh, of all possible MBP refreshes, to devote such an epic number of posts to?
I understand the "GPU Wars" accounts for a healthy percentage of them, but still, for a refresh that's widely expected to deliver only a nominal performance boost over the current model, it's pretty crazy how much virtual ink has been spilled on this topic. Maybe it's the early benchmark sightings, the fact that Haswell has been on the market in some form for several months already, and perhaps the "underwhelmingness" of a prospective update with potentially worse graphical performance in certain areas, which have combined to foster more debate than usual...?
For the record, I remember "Waiting for Arrandale", but don't remember an 8000-post thread. It's as though the frenzy of the Mac nerds is inversely proportional to the level of interest in Macs/OSX in the public at large. I guess we are feeling a need to overcompensate!
Because it's in the now. Right now. And it's the 2nd-gen of the rMBP. Not that hard to believe.
People I think what really matter is when new MBPs will be unveiled they will be totally free of any bugs (no ac wifi, no screen problem, no lag, etc...). This is what really count. After all these discussions and all this waiting time we see buggy machines only then we could be really really and really angry
Do I hear 9000?
All speculation aside, does anyone care to weigh in on why the MR community has chosen THIS refresh, of all possible MBP refreshes, to devote such an epic number of posts to?
I get the feelng that a lot of people that would normally have bought the current rMBP when they needed it have put it off the purchase over because of the reports of Image Retention, Dead Pixels, scrolling lag, an underpowered 13", and prices that (even after they were slightly dropped in the 2013 "refresh") are still a bit high. Plus the general impression that the 2nd generation is going to have these and other kinks worked out of it and will thus be a safer investment.
Many that needed it early in 2013 have been putting it off since the terrible rumor that it would debut at WWDC, and then thought it would be silly to have waited this long for nothing. The longer the wait, the more the frustration transmutes into posts here.
I also think the MacRumors effusion of iDevice and iOS news nearly every day leads us to want to find out if there are any real MBP scoops in this thread that MR doesn't care enough to post.
Combine a higher-than-normal number of people on the market, a heaping tablespoon of daily frustration, sprinkle with all of the very valid factors you mention, stir a little bit, and here we are.
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I hope so too! I'll be in the States for two more weeks and I will buy a 15" rMBP before I depart. I hope it will be the new Haswell model, but I will buy an Ivy Bridge model if the Haswell models have not been released.
We could still be waiting more than two and a half months from now. There is no guarantee that the Haswell MBPs will be released this year. If Apple do not have enough stock on hand to launch by early November, then the launch will have to be delayed until early 2014. Apple will not repeat last year's mistake of prematurely launching the iMac and being unable to satisfy holiday buying season demand.
This is certainly true, but is there any element of the rMBP that could cause a bad enough supply bottleneck to keep Apple from releasing it before the holidays? Releasing before the holidays obviously makes the most financial sense for Apple if they can manage it. I mean, their retina screen manufacturers have had quite a while now to work out those well-documented problems and increase yields, I imagine, and I'm sure Apple has been on their case about IR, dead pixels, etc. for quite a while now. Or is there something else, like Thunderbolt 2 that might delay the release beyond October?
The short answer is: We don't know.
I expect the Haswell rMBPs to use the same displays as the Ivy Bridge rMBPs, so I don't expect the displays to be a bottleneck. The most likely possible bottleneck would be the Haswell CPUs, but there are many other possibilities.
Currently, Apple charge $200 for the upgrade from 128GB to 256GB, $300 for the upgrade from 256GB to 512GB, and $400 for the upgrade from 512GB to 768GB, so that's $300 to $400 per 256GB. I expect incremental SSD pricing with the Haswell MBPs to be in the $200 to $300 range per 256GB, despite the additional benefit of the faster PCIe based SSDs. I believe the best-case (worst-case) scenarios probably would have upgrade prices from 128GB in the 13" model of:
to 256GB: $100 ($150)
to 512GB: $300 ($450)
to 768GB: $500 ($750)
... and from 256GB in the 15" model of:
to 512GB: $200 ($300)
to 768GB: $400 ($600)
to 1TB: $600 ($900)
My guess is that Apple must be working on something bigger than a spec bump otherwise they would've just unveiled the new model at WWDC with nothing more than a new CPU and possibly GPU.
Apple would have to have a new CPU to do that. No manufacturer has yet shipped a laptop with any of the Haswell CPUs we expect to be used in the MBPs.
I fear you're right, but hope you're wrong. Hope, because like many people here I just want the dam#ed thing ASAP, and a major revision probably means 2014.
I never, NEVER thought I'd be rooting against innovative new features, and yet here we are.
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