[BillCKing]

Folks ~

Since this is my first post, I'll make a short introduction here. I'm a teen living in Shanghai, still in school. And I'll soon fly to Durham to further my study. I'm now on an iMac, but I need a laptop as I'm leaving my home. My new home in Durham will provide me access to the computers, so I don't need to purchase it urgently. I'll probably wait until the Leopard got released. But will there be improvements on MBP in the coming MWSF 2008? Or shall I wait till Jan, 2008? I need suggestions.

BTW, I also need some advice on buying Apple in the U.S. Is there any points we foreigners have to be aware of when doing shopping in an Apple store?

Any of your comments will be a great help. Thank you very much for answering my questions.

[mduell]

Originally Posted by BillCKing 

Since this is my first post, I'll make a short introduction here. I'm a teen living in Shanghai, still in school. And I'll soon fly to Durham to further my study. I'm now on an iMac, but I need a laptop as I'm leaving my home. My new home in Durham will provide me access to the computers, so I don't need to purchase it urgently. I'll probably wait until the Leopard got released. But will there be improvements on MBP in the coming MWSF 2008? Or shall I wait till Jan, 2008? I need suggestions.

There will be a big update coming early next year (Intel's new faster/lower power Penryn chips, and everything else [hard drive, graphics, high-def optical drive, etc] should see updates), but it may not make it out until February or March.

Originally Posted by BillCKing 

BTW, I also need some advice on buying Apple in the U.S. Is there any points we foreigners have to be aware of when doing shopping in an Apple store?

Taking a short trip to a nearby state with no sales tax may be well worth the effort. Sales tax can run upward of $200 in some states on a MBP.

[analogika]

No.

In fact, I have it on good source that Apple will stop improving their machines entirely.



The machines have been updated recently. Figure on about a six-month update cycle, but really, it makes absolutely no sense to plan this ahead.

If you have a three-month window, that's half a product generation already. If it's come out in October, buy it. If it hasn't, wait.

Simple.

Note that machines bought in the US will come with US keyboards. Other than that, hard- and software are identical.

[mduell]

Originally Posted by analogika 

The machines have been updated recently. Figure on about a six-month update cycle, but really, it makes absolutely no sense to plan this ahead.

The MacBook Pro (and PowerBooks before it) is on a pretty consistent 9 month schedule*, which takes us right to the big Penryn update early next year.

* MacBook Pro was released 1/06, updated 10/06, and updated 6/07. Before that the PowerBooks were updated 10/05, 1/05, 4/04, and 9/03.

[alainmeyer1]

I just bought mine, don't make me feel bad

Well I thought about it before getting it and I just thought to myself: they will always keep updating the machines, so why ot just grab it and use it?

[ninahagen]

When will you get to Durham? Is that New Hampshire (no sales tax) or North Carolina (sales tax)?

If you are going soon, grab the latest MBP and be happy. They are amazing machines and will do almost everything fast.

If you are going in December, I personally would wait a couple months and buy the first Penryn.

Also, connsider what you will use it for, and buy enough RAM. If it is just for email, word and surfing the factory minimum will be enough. Games, graphics work, 3D stuff, video encode/decode, etc will require more.

[BillCKing]

Thanks, guys.

The place I'll go is NC, which charges sales tax. And I'm going soon, but I'll wait for Leopard. Spending 3000 some dollars on a laptop burns a hole in my pocket. So I would like it to serve for me for at least 2 years. I'll use the machine to surf, email and text works of course. And I do play games and do some graphics works sometimes. I'll probably upgrade the memory, but not through Apple, coz the price is way too horrible.

Thank you again for precious advices.