Buying a Macbook Pro in the US

Leopard

timbim,

timbim wrote: »

Leopard

Out of interest, what makes the express card slot such an important feature to you? I've only seen one use for the apple express card slot, although that may well be wholly due to a lack of trying. I rarely if ever use the card slot on my dell, I suppose with express cards becoming rarer, it's better for most manufacturers to sell only USB versions of the same thing (card readers, wifi dongles etc) so as to hit the whole market, as opposed to only those who have express card slots, or indeed the subset of those who know what it is!

Currently? My eSATA hard drives! :heart2:

And, soon to come, USB3 devices and hubs. And other goodies in the pipeline.

The ExpressCard ports give my laptops future-proofing.

I'd have had to junk my G4 PowerBooks years ago if they hadn't had Cardbus ports. (No USB2...no 802.11g...)

As it is, I'm still using one of them that's ten years old, for non-intensive tasks (and it runs Mac OS 10.5.8, bless it! ). And it hasn't got a mirror-bloody-glossy display :dance:.

You lot with your bin-it-after-couple-of-years tatty Windows kit! You just don't understand...





googler,

googler wrote: »

If they are, then my comment is redundant; but I don't have one, so couldn't say for certain.

Not so fast, matey! You can't just shrug it off that easily.

What you wrote was very certain indeed.

googler wrote: »

Not just the cable! You'll need a 240v adpator instead of the 110v that'll be supplied with the US model.......

Don't even THINK of just snipping off the 2-pin plug and connecting a UK 3-pin......

And it was completely incorrect.

If you don't know what you're writing about, you are well out of order giving such emphatic advice.

People base money-spending decisions on what they read here, because they believe that people who post on here do know what they are writing about.

You didn't put your sheepish disclaimer in your original posting, did you? Quite the reverse; you couldn't have been more assertive and emphatic – and wrong.

You have a responsibility to others for the advice you post on here. Naively, they trust you.

timbim_2

Leopard wrote: »

Currently? My eSATA hard drives! :heart2:

And, soon to come, USB3 devices and hubs. And other goodies in the pipeline.

The ExpressCard ports give my laptops future-proofing.

I'd have had to junk my G4 PowerBooks years ago if they hadn't had Cardbus ports. (No USB2...no 802.11g...)

As it is, I'm still using one of them that's ten years old, for non-intensive tasks (and it runs Mac OS 10.5.8, bless it! ). And it hasn't got a mirror-bloody-glossy display :dance:.

You lot with your bin-it-after-couple-of-years tatty Windows kit! You just don't understand...

I can see the argument there, but isn't the latest firewire standard supposed to be better than USB3 anyway? Express card or not, I'm seriously looking at the macbook pro, and really the 15in model at the moment. Do you actually need to be coming from a higher education network to get the HE discount? I've got the UCAS conditional offer letter, but do apple accept them or not?

Leopard

If you can live with it having a sealed-in battery and no ExpressCard port, the new, speed-bumped (by a lot) 15" MacBook Pro is a formidable device, particularly the 2.66 GHz i7 version.

But, without an ExpressCard port, you can't plug an eSATA-interfaced hard drive into it. Which, for me, is a deal-breaker in itself.

It's also worth bearing in mind that a sealed-in battery won't keep you fuelled through a 10-hour day without a refill. Not good if, for example, you're travelling.

I've got a brace* of 2007 Santa Rosa 2.4 GHz MacBooks Pro: they've got Firewire 800, Firewire 400, USB2 (of course), Gigabit Ethernet and ExpressCard ports. Plus swappable batteries and matte (now called "anti-glare") displays.

I'd love the raw power of the new ones but the pair I've got are plenty fast enough for my own needs and I wouldn't sacrifice their additional connectivity and battery-versatility. I look after them well and hope to get many more years' use out of them. Their ExpressCard ports give them an upgrade path in terms of connectivity and by the time I replace them I expect that all the interface standards will have moved on further.

There's the real possibility that a new 15" ProBook purchased now won't be able to interface in the future with devices that my 2007 ones will be able to do by means of their ExpressCard ports.

If some terrible disaster deprived me of both of mine, I'd go looking on eBay for something with an ExpressCard port rather than spend the insurance money on a new 15". If I did have to buy a new one now, for me it would have to be, with great reluctance, a 17" (with a matte screen, of course!).

I can't help you in regard to educational discounts, I'm afraid. I was educated a very long time ago and have no idea what's available now!

For discounts, I would look, personally, at what's on offer at the Apple Refurbs Store. If you time things right, many of them just after a range refresh (like now) are in fact brand new stock of just superseded models but at a hefty discount. My companion bought one such a couple of years ago: came in a brown box with a discount of 31% but was clearly brand new. She was over the moon with it! :happylove

The other thing to bear in mind is that with recently-introduced models you never know if some inherent problem with them is going to emerge (as with, for example, the 27" iMacs), whereas, with an existing model that's been out for a while you know what you're dealing with and hopefully the bugs will have been discovered (by early adopters) and fixed by the time you buy one.

From Apple, it's usually far cheaper to opt for the minimum spec of hard drive and (especially) RAM – then max them out yourself (which doesn't infringe the warranty). Usefully, this also gives you a spare hard drive to put into an enclosure/caddy – although, of course, if it has an eSATA port you won't be able to use that to plug it into a current 15" MacBook Pro...


* (Not being flash; I needed always to have a mirrored backup for immediate deployment in the event of a disaster.)

timbim_2

There's a fair bit of information in that post. Thanks Leopard. As I remember, the previous 15in pro didn't have an express card slot either, but I could easily be mistaken. In terms of problems, I wasn't thinking of buying until later on in the summer anyway, I'm going to have to replace my trusty Dell Latitude (lasted me three years now) before I go off to Uni, hence my question about the HE store.

I'd spotted the enormous cost of the RAM upgrade, The price of the upgrade from Apple is £320, while from Crucial the 8GB kit is £380, but then I suppose you could sell the two 2GB sticks you get included on to offset the cost. The hard drive question's an interesting one. I'd be tempted to stick with the standard one to start with and wait for SSD prices to drop a bit. I don't have a vast amount of data to store, currently I'm working just fine with 100GB.

I'm fine with 8 hours battery life, even if I am travelling all day, I wouldn't ever want to be using it for that long.

* (Not being flash; I needed always to have a mirrored backup for immediate deployment in the event of a disaster.)

No, won't do. That's undeniably flash, and you know it!

Leopard

timbim wrote: »

No, won't do. That's undeniably flash, and you know it!

Well, they were tax-deductible and Inland Revenue accepted it (eventually).

Had I been deprived of one (and it has happened to both of them, thanks to the nVidia 8600M graphics cards in them – but fortunately not at the same time!) my loss of earnings, particularly when working abroad, would have exceeded greatly the cost of having an immediately available spare.

When their 8600Ms expired, each one had to spend a week at an Apple Authorised Service Centre, being diagnosed officially, waiting for a new motherboard and then having it fitted and tested. I'd have been screwed if I hadn't had a backup.

timbim_2

That makes more sense. Must be a bit dull lugging two laptops off with you though.

Looking at the refurb store at the moment, there isn't a lot in there that's more discounted than the HE discount in the main store, which suggests I might be better off buying from the main store.

How I love hijacking a perfectly sensible thread!

Leopard

timbim wrote: »

That makes more sense. Must be a bit dull lugging two laptops off with you though.

Bit of a bind but you just sling two of them into the back of the car, with the luggage. If all goes well, one of them just stays there. The insurance company bit¢hes and I've had a few protracted discussions with Customs officers over the years, but it just became routine. (Along with the little Canon 85 printer and the... You get the general picture; it's a fast estate.)

I take my (Mac-hacked) netbook plus a ProBook with me nowadays!

When we go on holiday, my companion brings her own 15" ProBook, but the insurance company threw a wobbly about covering three! So, I take my WindMac and a bootable little hard drive, instead: plugs into her ProBook. It's got an eSATA port. Did I mention that the older 15" ProBooks had an ExpressCard port...?

(Nah, truth to tell, I usually use its Firewire 800 port for that. She hogs the ExpressCard port for her photos. Also got a neat little pair of LaCie speakers which plug into, and are powered by, the Firewire 400 port. Did I mention that the older 15" ProBooks had a Firewire 400 port as well as a Firewire 800 port...?)

My travelling, my baggage and my needs may not be very conventional but perhaps you're beginning to understand some of my oft-expressed complaints about the limitations of the more recent 15" ProBooks.

And as for those glossy screens, ever tried to use one in Mediterranean sunshine? :mad:

You'll love Max OS X, though: everybody does – they never go back to Windows again. :eek:

timbim_2

So what exactly is it you do then? And hacking a wind to boot mac os? That goes against the mighty dictum of Steve Jobs!

Anyhow, as a student I'll be on the move a fair bit, and having a laptop that can sensibly go with me and not break, even under extreme conditions (I've a cousin with a 17in pro, dropped it and bent one corner of the base 1/2in out of alignment, only damage was to the optical drive!) and the working lifetime of macs amazes me. From what I've seen of OSX, it's pretty nice, and seems to share some features with Linux. The network configuration, for example, sensibly shares proxy settings with the appropriate network profile, so I have to change one setting to move from no proxy to proxy, not about five. (Sort it out Microsoft!)

As far as I can tell, the pros, especially the 13in and 15in are not intended as desktop replacement machines, so if I want to do any lightning quick transfers to a USB3 drive, I can plug it into a suitably equipped desktop and use a gigabit network transfer. Just as good.

I am slightly peeved that they charge you an extra £120 for a screen you can sensibly use, but then at least that's better than the 1024x768 panel I've currently got, set in an inch wide plastic surround. *sigh*

vodkashot

Haven't checked this thread for a couple of days! thanks for all the replies. I will read it properly later.

It's correct to say that this will be an over the counter transaction and my mum will be bringing it back. With the discount and yes i kow sales tax is added on top, I still save about £250. In true MSE spirit I have looked at the cheapest way of getting this.

I want the new 13 inch one to replace my existing Sony vaio whose old age is catching up on it now. I'm going to use it for email, surfing and photos. Maybe a bit of wordprocessing but not much else. I know I could get a cheaper laptop but I've fallen in love with the MacBook but refuse to pay £999!

timbim_2

One thing to consider doing is unpacking the box in the US, putting the laptop and accessories in a laptop bag and posting all the documents home. That way, even if you get stopped and searched by customs upon your return, you won't have any real evidence that the laptop is newly purchased in America on you.