Monday, November 19, 2007

Apples Moves to the Top of my Shit List

Before I started the new job, I made this ridiculous spreadsheet to decide what new laptop I would be buying:



In reality, I wanted a new MacBook Pro, and I wanted to try and justify the at least 100% price premium between a Dell and a Mac.

I finally settled on the 2.2ghz welfare MBP for $1866 (with the education pricing, thanks so much) and ordered it. On November 1st, iWhore John sent me a couple Mac rumors sights that indicated that the MBP had moved to Santa Rosa architecture. I called Apple, and because it was ordered on October 30th and not October 31st -- even though it had not shipped -- my order wasn't transitioned automatically.

So I canceled it.

It turned out that the Santa Rosa chipset/bus speed change was for the MacBook, not the MBP. The mention of the MBP had to do with the addition of the 2.6ghz clock speed.

Well fuck: I need a laptop, and I just canceled the one I ordered...for no good reason.

I added Apple Care to my online order, and I think every Mac owner should have it (I loved my G4 Powerbook: $2500, 13 months old, busted keyboard, flickering screen, flaky motherboard), but you can buy it in month 11 for the same price and extend the warranty 2 more years: why give Apple your money a year early?

I knew I wanted 4GB of RAM, and my understanding was that the 2.2ghz MBP came with 2 x 1GB of RAM while the 2.4ghz and 2.6ghz came with 1 X 2GB of RAM. That said, if I wanted to upgrade the 2.2ghz to 4GB, I'd have to throw out the 2GB it came with and buy a 4GB kit, but if I bought the 2.4ghz or 2.6ghz I only needed to buy an additional 2GB stick.

When you consider the $239 Apple Care deferment, and the $100 ram savings for not throwing any out, it's probably worth $433 more to get the 2.4ghz model. On 11/3 I walked into the Apple Store, and not 20 minutes later I walked out with my 2.4ghz MacBook Pro.

I've been working with VMWare Fusion a lot, so I decided just 17 days later (Apple's return policy plus 3 days) that it's time for me to order more RAM. I jumped into System Profiler:



And immediately had an aneurism.

...

2 DIMMs? Could I have possibly misread the website?




Yup, I did. But wait...it gets better, for I could not make this up:

The MacBook Pro (15-inch Core 2 Duo) and MacBook Pro (17-inch Core 2 Duo) notebooks have two SDRAM slots in the bottom of the computer, and they come with at least 1 GB DDR2 SDRAM installed into the bottom slot.

Although these notebooks will accept up to a 2 GB SO-DIMM in each of the two memory slots, the MacBook Pro will only support 3 GB total memory. If you want to maximize the amount of SDRAM in your computer, install a 2 GB SO-DIMM in one slot and a 1GB SO-DIMM in the other.




I suspect this is a joke, since I saw today that Dell is selling the Vostro (the other laptop I considered) for $399.

As much as I like my new MBP, I don't love it SIX Dell Vostro laptops worth.

1 comment:

Ran Kailie said...

Dude its also not even the amount of memory but the type, 667 isn't the best out there. Hell compared to the newest DDR2, its slow, I just upgraded my DDR2 667 for the faster stuff (which isn't expensive mind you) and its a vast difference in performance.

I wouldn't even buy anything with anything less then DDR2-800 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDR2#Chips_and_modules)

IMO, and I know we've had this convo Apple always has been and always will be WAY over priced for what you're getting. But I also wouldn't necessarily suggest jumping on the Dell band wagon either, if you want serious performance at a decent price.

I've heard good things recently about Fujitsu's line of laptops, specifically the LifeBooks.

I'd avoid any laptop with an AMD, they're just not performing at the level Intel is right now.

But seriously if you're gonna drop 2400 on a laptop, just go for broke and get something powerful like an Alienware laptop or This thing.