I went to an Apple Store in the Bay Area and was able to get a 2Ghz MacBook Pro on Wednesday. Apparently the Apple Store got 5 MacBook Pros that were ordered by a start-up, but a unknowing employee thought they were for public sale and started calling people on the waiting list. As I was completing the transaction the guy from the start-up walked in and that is when the Apple Store employees realized they messed up. I also have a MacBook Pro 2.16Ghz ordered through Apple.com. I need to cancel that.
My impressions:
I echo just about everything said in the
arstechnica review. I actually have the same Timbuktu bag and can attest that the MacBook Pro fits, but it is very snug. The MagSafe adapter hasn't annoyed me the way it did to the reviewer, but my MBP has been sitting on my desk for the most part. My friends and colleagues have been playing around with the MagSafe and are intrigued by it. I'm sure most laptop users know the implications of someone tripping over your power cord. My wife's iBook was destroyed from a ground impact caused by our rambunctious golden retrievers innate ability to get the power cable wrapped around his legs.
I've been using Photoshop CS2 and Illustrator CS2 for three days and I have to admit that the performance is pretty slow. Keep in mind that I've been using a PowerMac G5 for 2 years. The performance is bearable and since I won't be doing a lot of heavy design work on this machine I can deal with it until CS3. MS Office is another commonly used suite that is slow compared to my PowerMac. It "feels" about the same as the PowerBook 1.67 that I was using over the last 3 months. Overall I really like this laptop. Using OSX feels just as fast as my PowerMac and aside from a few pro apps I can't tell the difference in speed. I've run WoW and Rise of Nations and both run a lot faster than the PowerBook, but trail behind my PowerMac, which was expected since my PowerMac has a X800 XT video card in it.