New Apple MacBook Pros

I was on the Apple website for no particular reason...and I saw that the new MacBook Pros are now only $1299 with the student discount. Upon further reading, Apple has named all their aluminum body MacBooks, "MacBook Pros", so $1299 is for the 13" notebook. The new 15" start at $1899, the same price as last year but the non educational price has come down to $1999. They've come down from $2049 ($2199 non-educational pricing) when they were first released. On top of that, significant improvements have been made to the model that I thought were drawbacks to mine and even the first aluminum version. All MacBook Pros now support up to 8GB of RAM (mine maxes out at 4GB) and they now include an SD Card Reader! Further, they feature the new built in battery previously only offered in the 17" model and claim to last 5 years and last up to 7 hours. Mine was at 5 hours to begin with if everything was turned down (screen and processing speed) and 3.5 hours under normal operation but now after a year, I think I can only max out at 3.5 hours if I really tried and 2.5 if I had things going normally. New batteries are over $100, I won't get on this year but I may get one next depending on if I attend grad studies. The hard drive has a capacity of 250 GB (up from 200 GB) and the processing speed has been increased to 2.53 GHz for the base 15" model (up from 2.4 GHz). I remember the 2.5 GHz 15" model was $2399 when I bought mine (good thing I didn't waste that extra money). However it still only features a 3 MB cache rather than 6 MB the 2.5 GHz model feature last year. Wow, I'm jealous.

However, the one newer drawback is that the entry level 15" (2.53 GHz) no longer features a discrete graphics card but an integrated 256 MB shared memory. However, with a possible 8GB of RAM, does it really matter now? With that being said, there is 13" model with the exact same specs as the 15" (except the screen size) selling for $1629 so you would save $270. I think I would take those savings if I was buying a new notebook because I can use that money for upgrades. The 15" model with a discrete graphics card sells for $2149 and that is just too pricey for me.

The entry level MacBook Pro (13") features a 2.26 GHz processor but only a 160 GB hard drive and 2 GB of RAM. If processing speed isn't much of a concern, you can upgrade the RAM to 4 GB and the hard drive to 250 GB to match the next model and check out at $1446 and save another $183. I think the $56 hard drive upgrade is a must especially for design students that need to run VMWare or Boot Camp. Unlike RAM, it is something that can't be easily changed later. Having said that, the $111 RAM upgrade is actually reasonable because it would work out to be $55.50 for each 1066 MHz DDR3 module. The RAM that goes on sale and the one that I have is only 667 MHz DDR2.

As usual, Apple is 'giving away' iPod Touches (8GB) with the purchase of a MacBook Pro. This year the upgrade to 16 GB is only another $70 rather than the $100 I had to pay. It is definitely worth it to get the 16 GB if you want to put movies on your iPod or have a massive mp3 collection. The iPhone is expected to come down in price too when pricing is announced for their next iPhone on June 19th! The US model has come down by 50% to $99 for the entry level one. My contract is going to be up in November 2010 (another 16 months) so hopefully there will be even better deals because I'm thinking of getting an iPhone if I can afford it. If I can pay $40 a month after all taxes and fees, then I'll take it :) I know that is asking a little bit much especially by today's standards but I'm a student. I would like call display and some texting (~100 texts) but don't need particularly much data, 250 MB a month would probably due because most places I'm in (home and school) have wifi. Roger recently dropped there light texting value pack for $11 with Call Display and Voice mail. Now you must pay $15 for 1000 msgs but you get new features (that I don't want) like mobile back up and web browsing. That would bring my monthly bill to over $35. It was supposed to be a $10 plan!

I think each year, Apple is making their products even more affordable and desirable than ever before.

Though I am really jealous and wish the products came out a year earlier, I think I'm going to buy another Apple computer but it would likely be an iMac. They are cheaper than MacBooks and are cool desktops. They start at $1349 and feature 2.66 GHz processor with 320 GB hard drive. I've seen people keep their MacBook for 4-5 years and I've already have bought two notebooks, I think the next one should be a desktop.