Rui CarmoYep. That and today's Merom-based speed bumps are the two main reasons I'm seriously considering ordering one of the new MacBook Pros (which made their debut a bit earlier than what I expected, and which thankfully don't ship with glossy screens by default).
The 2GB 15" one seems about right, too. What is preventing me from refreshing the portuguese Apple store every 5 minutes is (besides the certainty that it will take them up to 3 days to update the site) that this year's vacation made me realize that a small laptop has pretty significant advantages.
So if anyone gets wind of revamped consumer MacBooks without glossy screens, do drop me a line - preferably before Santa starts harnessing his reindeer.
The current bet (based on sampling of the Sony and Asus line-ups) is that Merom consumer MacBooks still have a chance of popping out of the oven in time for the Xmas season - and, hopefully, be rather less prone to toasting than their elders.
But since I'm prone to mulling such things to a rather unusual extent (it's all about making sure I get what I want), I will nevertheless try to take a good look at what's out there - it's too damn easy to avoid falling into the trap of doing direct price comparisons between Macs and PCs right now, even if you consider Mac OS X as being worth, oh... Eur. 500? More?
I'm not going to go into the "value" of the iLife suite and other bundled software, since pretty much everyone bundles something else besides the OS and I seldom use the bundles anyway.
Rest assured, however, that I will climb back from that trap. Linux and Free Software might be improving to an extent where you can pick up any old junk and get a minimally usable computer, but I prefer sticking to the maximally usable ones.
Ah, what about Vista, you say?
Sure: Hasta la vista, baby.