Thinking about getting a MBP

Now, im sure all of you have heard the story before. A life-long windows user is looking to make the switch to a mac. Basically, I love the way the mpb is designed and im looking for a new laptop for school next year so I can stop using this older dell I have. Now, before making the jump, and in terms of price, it is quite a leap, I want to make sure im doing the right thing. So i'd like to ask a few questions before i make the purchase.

1. The new mac os is coming out in october, correct? Is it wise to wait until then to buy it, will it make the mbp more money? Although this might not be possible as Im going to need it before school starts. I can just buy a copy afterwards when it is out, but is it a hassle to upgrade like it is for windows os?

2. Boot camp is going to be very important to me. When the beta is done and leopard is out, will they have the full version on the website to download? Is there a difference between the beta thats out now and the one that comes with leopard? Also, it says on the apple website that you need to have a full version copy of windows vista in order to use, not an Upgrade version you buy at the store. So, how would I even get that copy since I dont have one now. Also, when setting the partition hd sizes, how should I divide them?

Anyway, I guess those are my two major questions right now. I guess there is more than two questions in there though lol. But any other feedback would be great. Thanks a lot!

 

To answer one of your many nestled questions, I would say it would be better t wait for the new MBP. Assuming you are getting the 15.4" one, you will get the LED backlighting and the price will be the same since Apple won't change the standard $1999 price. The incremental upgrades aren't too shabby as well.

 

Don't the MBP's out now have the LED backlighting alright? Unless I read wrong on the new review of the notebook on this site?

 

Once Leopard hits, all the MBPs will come with it standard. Apple may give people who bought a MBP within the past 30 days of Leopard's release a voucher to upgrade for $20 or whatever.

The MBPs price won't drop when Leopard comes out though. Just buy now and then upgrade to Leopard when it does finally get released.

 

yeah the hardware was already upgraded. if you get the 15" mbp you will have an LED back-lit screen among a plethora of other upgrades.

come october- they will come with leopard but neither the hardware nor the price will change. i say- if you need it now, buy it now. boot camp already works. the driver support is there. it runs windows perfectly.

its hard to say whether there is going to be a difference between software currently in beta and software that is yet to be released / invented / finished and that no one knows about except for a few select apple engineering staff and those-who-need-to-know.

you can upgrade to leopard with minimal hassle in my opinion, but you might end up doing a clean install of leopard as you would were you upgrading windows, just for peace of mind.

it is impossible to tell whether or not they will allow users of 10.4 to continue using boot camp / upgrade to the latest version. my guess is that they will not suddenly disallow us to use the boot camp we currently have access to, but that there might be some enticing feature of the leopard version that makes us want to upgrade. apple seems to follow that strategy. although, boot camp in itself, while very effective, is not exactly elegant. it involves rebooting every time you need to switch operating systems. i don't see why boot camp is so important to you, unless you are a boot camp dev. or something. if running windows is actually what is important to you, you will be fine with a mac today, tomorrow, two weeks from now, etc.

you can buy windows from a variety of resellers. where do you buy eggs? the choice is mostly up to you. if you are a student, you might want to buy windows through your school at a discount.

as far as partitioning, you will need to explain what you want to do in windows and osx and then some one will be able to explain to you how to partition the drives accordingly.

 

The question I would like to add to this is:

Which version of Vista should someone put on a MBP, and where are people seeing the best deals on purchasing said version of Vista?