Now about MBP that I was going to buy. I like their customer service and I've heard lots of good things about their OS. Also they say that their hardware is very reliable however I don't understand what reasons they have to say that. And now about bad things. In Ukraine MBP is 1.5-2 times more expensive than in the USA. Current MBPs have faulty GPUs and I guess the new model will end up with nVidia that is potentially faulty too. We already saw some rumors about this. Some great guy from this forum adviced me to buy an old model with ATI but mac store didn't ship to my country and just when I was going to find ways to get it, that MBP disappeared from their store. 🙁 On the top of that our so called "certified" stores can't come up with the decision if they are certified or not. I've called to all the shops of our "MacHouse" reseller and half of them told me they won't do anything if my MBP bought from the online store, dies. Half of them told me that they'll accept it. Quite a funny situation. 🙂 And the final argument is that in a year I am leaving for the USA. I'll be working at one of the US companies and will stay for rather long time in that country. And there I'll be able to buy an MBP for the normal price (if I after all want to). So from my point of view buying a new MBP (let's guess it comes with nVidia) is the waste of money I mentioned above.
So I started looking for other laptops in the market. I wanted to find something that has 17"<inches<20" and ATI and the only thing I found there was
Acer Aspire 8920G-6A3G25Bn (LX.AS60X.008):
18.4^/ Core2 Duo T5750 2 GHz/ 3 GB/ 250 Gb/ BlueRay-DVD/ ATI HD X3650 512mb/ fm+/ LAN 1G/ Wi-Fi +/ BT+/ Vista HP/ CardReader+/ web-cam 0.3M/ VGA+
But this Acer turns out to be a piece of crap so I guess I am going to abandon that stupid 17"<inches<20" idea and look for something that has 17". 😱
Thanks for your time! 🙂
NVIDIA screw up with some graphic cards, we all know it. But it doesn't matter everything else from them will be faulty! I don't know exact numbers, but it seems half of the notebooks that have dedicated graphics use NVIDIA's cards. Especially now that they acknowledged the problem, I doubt they'd risk losing another 200+ millions. Of course it doesn't change the fact that some models should be avoided (i.e. 8600M GT that was in MBPs).
About resellers... it sounds like it used to be in Poland. Now it's only marginally better, meaning they don't refuse warranty repairs for units purchased abroad. Apple's warranty is international and authorized service can't refuse it. However many people had problems with getting it. From their experience it seems only persistence in calling Apple Europe helps - don't bother arguing with resellers or importers, they're the ones losing profit when you buy abroad, so they'll always try to make your life more difficult. If you aren't sure if the service is authorized, check at Apple's site (when you go to your country's site and go where "store" should be, you should get a list of resellers, service etc.).
Also keep in mind you should probably pay some tax if you bring a laptop from US, so they might consider it a reason to refuse help (i.e. demand the receipt, proof of you having paid taxes etc.). I'm not sure if they can do this, but some used to try it here. They don't do so anymore though, so perhaps they shouldn't have in the first place.
In the end, I'd say if you don't need a good laptop right now and can afford to buy cheap one just for one year, do it and get a MBP in US (if you still want it). I suppose it'd take at least a few months for new models to hit countries where there're no Apple Stores, so you'd likely be waiting anyway. Also by this time 17" will likely be redesigned as well (if you like the new style, it's an advantage... if not, well...
😉) and probably for some time on the market, so any issues with it would be known.
