Apparently you can format an SD card, install OS X, and use it to boot your Mac

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2009/06/boot-from-the-sd-card-slot-in-new-macbook-pros.ars

Isn't that nice.

I'm about 95% decided to upgrade my 2 yr old white MacBook to a MacBook Pro.

With the education discount, it will cost me about $250 out of pocket - provided I can sell the old book for $750-800*. Plus one of my students reminded me GA has a tax free weekend for education around the end of July... so i won't have to pay tax on the laptop or the optional printer.

S W E E E E T !!

* I think I can get that because it still has > 1 yr of AppleCare on it and I bumped the RAM to 4 Gb.

You might be pushing your luck on that price. Right after the WWDC keynote, Apple had refurbs at $749. Went like hot cakes.

AWWW . . Whadda ya mean ??

I'll sell it to some newbie Mac convert from Windows , and he'll think it's a Great DEAL !!


You are probably correct !

Just for the info, you could look your particular model up at everymac.com to see what they estimate the street price would be.

Well prices are all over $600-800... but a lot depends upon the add-ons... RAM, HD size, Apple Care, and the software.

I may stick with what I have ... mainly use it for presentations and it does that well. Editing is not super fast, but I mainly create the "shows" on my Desktop at home.
Part of my zeal for MBP was the newness of the update info.... I may wait until next summer. Ought to really have some doozies out then.
I've also been thinking I need to replace my desktop .. . it's 5 yrs old G5... That'd make more sense, than replacing a 2 yr old laptop... only problem with that is that I'd spend even more (24" iMac, or a Quad box) than for the laptop... I'd sure like to see a Quad iMac soon... that'd really complicate my choices !

Apparently some of the new (13") MBPs come with a slower SATA 1/1.5 HDD interface (1.5 GBit/s) rather than SATA 2 (3 GBit/s) used on the earlier models (including mine), according to this Macrumors discussion. So that's very interesting indeed. Then again, the new models have much better batteries that can last up to 8 hours. So knowing this, I wouldn't go out and get the new model before doing some serious consideration of performance needs.

And now I'm even more satisfied that I got this 13" and not the 'upgraded' MBP 13".

It's not a big deal at all. 3GBit/s is way overkill, especially in a laptop. No laptop drive even comes close to saturating an ATA 100 bus, much less SATA 150. An SATA 10,000 RPM Raptor barely utilizes SATA 150, they come in around 65.

Even dual drive RAID 0 Raptors only reach 135;

http://www.barefeats.com/hard38.html

I was kinda thinking that it wasn't much of an issue - probably saves a couple of bucks, too.