Well, Apple released new laptop computers today, as incremental updates to their existing MacBooks (MBs) and MacBook Pros (MBPs). I was pondering for the past couple of months whether I should upgrade - my current 1st gen MB is a year and a half old and a bit long in the tooth. However, the updates have left me disappointed.

I wanted an excuse to upgrade to a 15-in MBP, but for $700 more than a base MB, one doesn’t get a whole lot:

• slightly bigger screen (quite nice)
• more ports (nice, but not an issue for me)
• backlit keyboard (nice, but not important)
• multi-touch gesture pad
• graphics card (quite nice, but not critical for everyday tasks)

Otherwise, the two machines are extremely similar - same processor speed, bus speed, RAM…. It’s hard to justify jumping from a $1450 MB to a $2150 MBP for those few extra features. So then I got to thinking about my current machine. There are really only two issues with it - the hard drive is too small, and it’s a bit slow. The latter issue is less of a problem than I would like to admit, as the new computers are probably no more than 30-40% faster. I already have 2GB of RAM. So that leaves the hard drive… and NCIX has a 250GB hard drive for $126 after mail-in rebate. Sounds like a plan to me! Hopefully new MacBook Pros will be kicking around next year.