Mac OS X forum: Worth waithing for Leopard to buy a new MacBook for college?

If you have the patience to wait for the announcement/release of Leopard (10.5), then I would do so.

Although, as Grim says, the actual upgrade procedures in OS X are very easy.

Enjoy your MacBook when you get it

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Frustrating, but Mac OS installs are no big deal whatsoever. I'm eagerly awaiting 10.5. Pros poo poo it somewhat, but I like the increased user friendliness & move towards convergence. Recent Mac OSs have become much nicer after the frustration of losing the original Mac feel moving from 8.5. They are getting it more right all along. And, as always, much more elegant than clunky MS.

I've upgraded from OS 10.2 to 10.3 (Panther) without a hiccup in the past, so I'm assuming that 10.5 will be just as flawless an upgrade.

As has already been mentioned, there are student discounts galore from Apple for new computers and software; unfortunately the student discount on iPods was discontinued in favor of everyone getting the price students got.

If your current machine isn't dying, I would recommend waiting until August to buy your new MacBook. I bought mine in October because my PC finally bit the dust, but I was waiting because I knew that the new Core 2 Duo powered MacBooks were coming soon. While I don't forsee any big changes like Core Duo to Core 2 Duo in the next couple of months, who knows what other changes to the machine there may be in the months before you go to college. They may have another bump in processor speeds, add a dedicated video card (the current major performance difference between the MacBook and MacBook Pro), or increase the baseline hard drive capacity / ram so that you get more bang for your buck. They may also upgrade the built-in Airport to the 802.11n standard instead of the current 802.11g.

Apples big meetings where they usually announce new products are in January (next week) and the beginning of August. Those are the most likely times that they will announce big changes to products.

Intel has announced that they will officially release their quad-core chips Monday (2 desktop & 1 workstation version). The same day as the MacExpo starts. Coincidence? I think not, although I doubt that Apple will shoe-horn any of them into their laptops in the foreseeable future (for heat/power-consumption reasons).

Cheers,
=-= The CyberPoet

I was considering getting an iMac back in July, and near the end of August they flipped a switch and put Core 2 Duos in place of the Core Duos. By the time I bought my iMac in mid-September it cost me $100 less and ran (according to benchmark testers) 35% faster. Point being that Apple will sometimes just launch an upgraded model of one of their computers, so waiting can't possibly hurt.

Also, Boot Camp has two separate jobs: create a partition on which you can install Windows, and create a driver disc for the hardware components in an iMac. Apple says that only Windows XP SP2 will accept all of the drivers (and they're right [the reason you can't install a prior version of Windows XP is because anything before SP2 won't accept the drivers for Airport and the ethernet cable]). For best results you should use Windows XP, but Windows Vista (as of RC1) accepts enough of the drivers that you can do anything you'll need to.

but includes new OS for free after new OS intro. Wait & see what comes out of the public meeting soon.

I don't have a Starbucks near me. Will I be able to update my machine when Leopard is released?





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