New MacBook Pro Soon
Published on 27 Oct 2006 · Filed in Personal · 315 words (estimated 2 minutes to read)I’m glad I waited just a bit longer to move forward on a purchase of a new MacBook Pro. I had considered purchasing one late last week, but decided to wait just a bit longer. My patience was rewarded with an update to the Core 2 Duo (at a top speed of 2.33GHz), double the RAM (2GB instead of 1GB), and a bigger hard drive size (120GB instead of 100GB). I spoke to the people at the local Apple store at Crabtree Valley Mall, and they placed me on a contact list for the new 2.33GHz 15.4" model (17" is too big for me). I’m the second one on the list!
I’m looking forward to the enhanced performance that I should get from the new laptop. While I absolutely love my current 1GHz PowerBook G4, it’s getting a bit long in the tooth, and I’ll be moving from a single core CPU to a dual core CPU running at double the clock speed. Not to mention a SATA hard drive instead of an ATA drive, faster front side bus speed (667MHz vs. 133MHz), Airport Extreme instead of “regular” Airport, built-in Bluetooth, and a faster DVD burner with dual-layer support. I get excited just thinking about it.
I’ve already inventoried my applications, and the majority of them are already Universal. There are a few notable exceptions, such as Microsoft Office, but otherwise I’m in pretty good shape.
The one thing I’m looking forward to the most is virtualization. I’ve been selected to participate in the beta for VMware Fusion, VMware’s new Macintosh desktop product, and I can’t wait to get it installed and start running Windows, Linux, OpenBSD, and Solaris on my Mac laptop. This is where the 2GB of RAM is really going to come in handy.
As soon as I actally get my new MacBook Pro, I’ll post more details and first impressions here.