A Few Questions before my purchase

I'm thinking of purchasing a PowerBook sometime in the next 4 months or so, hopefully before my fall semester begins. I have a PC and I hate windows, also the fact that my LCD screen on my laptop is messing up due to having 7 verticle lines of permenatly lit pixles running down my screen....it's annoying to say the least. My uses of the computer include schoolwork, internet browsing, watching movies, and maybe a game every now and then (by that i mean once or twice a year).

- Apple will release Leopard
- 15" Macbook Pro will have LED backlight (Will this be for Macbook as well)
- Intel will release Santa Rosa
- nVidia will release new graphics chipsets

Anyone have any good estimates on when these features will come out? When they do come out and will the price of the MacBook stay the same? Do you think the price of the current MacBooks with their current configuration will drop due to these added benefits coming around the corner?

I dont NEED a macbook right now so i dont mind playing the waiting game if I can get a Macbook a in the next 4-6 months with better benefits or at a lower cost. Can you use student discounts for refurbished products? A HUGE factor in my decision in buying this will be if the mac office program is 100% compatible with Windows Office, in terms of the same layout and functions.

I know thats a lot of questions in one, but thanks for any help.

 

Leopard is not due until October now, Santa Rosa is just around the corner, but who knows when Apple will utilize it, LED screens are promised by the end of the year I believe, and there is no way of telling if Apple will stick with ATI in the next MBP or switch to nVidia.

Buy it when you need it. None of these are going to be so earth shattering that you will hate yourself for not having them. Remember the hype of new products usually outweighs the real word value.

 

I'm a college kid who has to pay for this thing himself and i would really love to have leopard come with my notebook so I dont have to spend an extra $200-150 on an OS a month after my laptop purchase. I guess I'll just wait till mid july and see if there are any announcements and go from there. All of this research makes me WANT to get a new Macbook, however I dont really NEED one just yet.


Is MAC office 100% compatible with MS office? Also I hear MAC Office 2008 is coming out "this year" anyone have a time frame on that? lol

 

The question should be is OS X compatible to Office, and the answer is yes it is. There is Office 2004 if you want to stay with Microsoft, but there are alternatives since the current office isn't Universal Binary, which means optimised for Intel Processors.

But if you are thinking of getting a PowerBook, that shouldn't make a difference.

 

If gaming is not your concern, then it's not worth waiting for. Unless you plan on playing lots of games via Boot Camp, a better graphics card is just something you won't be using. Santa Rosa again isn't all that considering all the power a MacBook Pro already comes with. A 2.16/2.33Ghz C2D in the current MacBook Pros is definitely nothing to laugh at, and CPU-wise, it's the fastest and most portable laptp there is (in terms of battery life).

I'd say there's no reason to wait until Leopard comes out. Honestly, I would advise against installing new OSs as soon as the come out, as there are always bug fixes. You don't want to be a bug tester and find out that something went horribly wrong. Get Leopard a month or so after it comes out (November). Plus, if you are in college, you should have a computer store that will sell that software to you cheaper anyway.

Oh, and Office 2004 (current version) and Office 2008 (to be released later this year) can create and edit documents from their Windows counterparts.