MBP 13" Screen Question, (and other questions in general).

Okay, so I was poised to order a new MBP 13" after hearing they updated the screen to have a 60% greater gamut. (I had previously returned my unibody Macbook last December after not being able to live with the low quality screen; I had loved everything else but it was that intolerable.) The longer battery life of the newer model seemed appealing as well.

However, several things are making me re-think my decision. First of all, I'm hearing stuff about throttled SATA speeds. This has me a little worried, as though I'm going to be getting the base model with the hard drive, I was planning on upgrading in the future to a SSD. Do you guys think this is a hardware issue or a software issue? How big of an issue is it?

Also, another thing that has got me a little bit worried (okay, a LOT worried) is about a display where the blues seem like purple and whatnot. Apparently it "looks like when you turn up that one artificial option in the nVidia control panel", as one forumer stated. What alarms me even more is the fact that someone said they contacted Apple support and they said that it was supposed to look like that and that's what 60% greater color gamut was supposed to look like. What are your thoughts? Do some notebooks have a normal screen while others have that "unnaturally vivid" screen?

One last thing - I'm most likely boarding a flight to Taiwan in the beginning of July, and I want to be able to have a laptop to carry over there (since I'll be there for a month and I need a computer with a nice display to edit pictures on, as I'm pretty heavy into photography). When Apple announced the new laptops, I naturally thought, "what luck!" and was planning on making the purchase. What are YOUR thoughts about how fast these issues can be fixed? If I buy in June off of, say, eBay, and it turns out the computer has defects such as stated above or other defect(s), can I have the unit repaired by Apple once I return from the trip (mid August) if a fix is out by then?

What would be my course of action if this is what happens (basically tl;dr version of the paragraph directly above):
Buy from eBay
Land a Macbook Pro with a bad screen and/or throttled SATA
Live with the defects and take the computer to Taiwan for a month
Come back, find out Apple has issued a fix

I obviously can't return it to the eBay seller, but how would Apple take care of the problem?

Thank you so much for reading that massive wall of text and I look forward to seeing what you guys think about it.

 

The screen on the original unibody was terrible, but I just saw the new 13" MBP at Fry's today, and the screen looks absolutely fantastic. I'd say you have nothing to worry about there.

 

I was just out shopping today and looked carefully at the 13" macbook pro screen at the apple store. It looked very good and quite comparable to the 15" it was sitting next to. Then off to best buy to check the older macbook 2.4. I was having a hard time deciding which get as the 2.4 model is discounted nicely right now. But, when comparing the macbook 2.4 to the 15" pro, there was a marked difference. The 13" looked pail and washed out by comparison. I can see why you returned yours. But based on what I saw today, no problem with the new 13" pro. Don't know about the SATA speed issue. Just found out about that and from what I am reading here don't like it much. So personally, I haven't bough yet.

 

I dought you would ever utilize the sata speed. I dought anyone really does on an apple. The only time would see it utilized is for hard core gameing.

 

I can think of plenty of instances, such as music production, video editing, and graphics, provided you have a SSD.

 

Yes there are quite a few reporting fluorescent colors with the 9C9F screen. I've seen it on dutch forums, Macrumors and Apple.
Here's one: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=719107&highlight=9C9F. They mention specific pictures that really show it.

The one artificial option is digital vibrance.

I would be worried too if I was buying. I would buy it somewhere that you're sure of that has a good return policy.

 

the color variations have sparked my interest as well...not to say its a major dealbreaker, but when paying for a high end machine, you'd kinda expect the laptop to display the colors correctly... =/

if anyone comes up with any new updates or fixes, please share

 

There's a lot more information on MR:
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=717479&highlight=9CA1
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=719107