What would you buy with $2000.00?

[jcpb]

of course I wish to save money and not necessary spend it all.

I do like the weight and speed of the AIR model but it's not flexible to upgrade. I would like for it to last a long time. so, then PRO RETINA? I've read usb external super dvd/cd drive reviews on Amazon and i'm concerned about the reliability besides if you had to carry that with you, then it is defeating the purpose of "light carry"...

I wish Apple will come up with thin light weight with a long battery life and great screen with optical drive still installed. am I asking for too much?

Do you really need an optical drive while on the road? If you don't, buy the MBA.

If you do and want to keep yourself in Macland, the only option available is a non-Retina MBP.

If you do, want to stay in Macland, and want Blu-Ray, you have to buy an external BR ODD.

Apple won't make an ultrathin laptop with an optical drive, because honestly how often do you use that ODD anyways? You can carry a spindle with 80 BR discs with you, or you can carry a single bus-powered 2TB 2.5" HDD. Which would you rather carry?

 

[bluebird3]

Do you really need an optical drive while on the road? If you don't, buy the MBA.

If you do and want to keep yourself in Macland, the only option available is a non-Retina MBP.

If you do, want to stay in Macland, and want Blu-Ray, you have to buy an external BR ODD.

Apple won't make an ultrathin laptop with an optical drive, because honestly how often do you use that ODD anyways? You can carry a spindle with 80 BR discs with you, or you can carry a single bus-powered 2TB 2.5" HDD. Which would you rather carry?

I'm set on Macland for sure. If I didn't, I would miss it for sure. I've never owned anything else. yes, at home with my current Mac, I use optical drive a lot. I import all my cds into I tunes. I don't use it to watch dvds much, but I have. plus if I went to a lap top, I'll watch it a lot more. probably few nights a week at bed time....

 

[l.a.rossmann]

A Lenovo T530 and a night of hookers and blow.

Oh, it has to be Apple. A 15.4" retina deal for sure. The screen is amazing and it's insanely fast. I love it. I'm not a fan of Apple laptops, each generation seems to get something hideously wrong as they attempt to "innovate".... but even as an Apple hater, the A1398 15" Retina is a WORK OF ART!

Everything works and comes together so beautifully. No ******** throttling/overheating when you encode a 5 minute video like with the 820-2915 boards. No back covers coming undone because of glue like on 2008/2009 a1286 machines. No it's-2012-but-we're-using-1440x900-because-at-apple-it's-chiq-to-be-obsolete screen. It's just amazing. The retina is what a computer SHOULD Be like when the company coding the OS is also designing the hardware. It's a cohesive experience, not a cohesive clusterf@$k, that outperforms so many other machines, and feels beautiful from the moment you turn it on. Is built beautifully from the moment you disassemble it. I get goosebumps everytime I open one of those and feel like I'm sodomizing it anytime I take a soldering iron to it. That machine is special.

Buy it, fall in love, never look back.

P.S.

For the love of god - don't read a single thread on image retention/OMGTHELGSCREENISSOBAD!!! Don't contract OCD. It is contagious(at least based on the posts I read). At the end of the day it is a consumer laptop, not a $10,000 reference monitor, so enjoy it. The LG screen aint that bad.

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of course I wish to save money and not necessary spend it all.

I do like the weight and speed of the AIR model but it's not flexible to upgrade. I would like for it to last a long time. so, then PRO RETINA? I've read usb external super dvd/cd drive reviews on Amazon and i'm concerned about the reliability besides if you had to carry that with you, then it is defeating the purpose of "light carry"...

I wish Apple will come up with thin light weight with a long battery life and great screen with optical drive still installed. am I asking for too much?

On optical drive reliability - the drives that suck the disc in seem to fail more often than standard tray-loading drives. I've kept every tool on a USB stick since 2007, because I just don't expect any Macbook I come into contact with to have a working optical drive. If anything, the external one is easier to replace when you have a problem with it!

Plus, optical media is very 1990s. Putting a disk in and waiting 15 seconds for it to become usable, the speed, the deteoriation from scratches that appear even if you never touch the bottom of the disc, the lack of rewriteability w/out a heavy price premium.... blech. I'm a four year optical drive free user in the portable realm, and loving it. I have a desktop to rip CDs to FLAC for my collection and nothing else. If I were a laptop user, that'd definitely be external, with a second HDD or SSD in the DVD drive bay if it were available in the laptop.

 

[elvahsiao]

MACBOOK PRO of course! Even if MACBOOK PRO RETINA IS VERY GOOD! But I think it's a little bit expensive! What's more, the hard disk doesn't have enough space for me to restore my film.
I like the apple Desktop as well. I think if you have enough money, you can also buy the matching accessories for your Macbook. For example, speakers ,wireless mouth and etc.

Hope it would help!