Needing to buy soon, but be ready for Leopard

I can't wait until October when Leopard comes out to buy a Macbook, so I will be buying the current generation it looks like. A couple of questions:

Is there anything else around the corner, i.e. by June, hardware upgrade, whatever? I suspect not, but please let me know if I have missed something.

Also, mostly I wordprocess, browse the internet, and play video clips off of the internet. I assume getting a faster processor in my case in anticipation of Leopard probably does not make sense (currently I plan to buy the cheapest MBP, but again, please let me know if I am missing something.

Thanks!

 

Intel will be launching the Santa Rosa platform refresh in early May. It remains to be seen when Apple will actually pick it up for their laptops.

So yes, there's a hardware upgrade coming before Leopard (unless Apple is really late to the game) but it won't be necessary by any stretch to run Leopard. Any machine you buy from Apple now will be able to run Leopard (as far as I know).

 

Thanks. That is just the kind of info I was looking for.

 

They have to announce. Then they have to ship. That's a few months right there.

Santa Rosa has some nice enough features. But, it's not like the jump from G4 to Core Duo. ie, these current laptops are going to bepretty strong for a while.

Of course, I have to say that, I just bought mine last week. But seriously, the CPU clock and FSB clock improvement will be more evolutionary than revolutionary.

And yes, they will run Leopard very well.

 

Oooh, you got me excited. I think my next laptop would probably be a macbook pro woth santa rosa 3gb (already have) ram and leopard. This would be around the first quarter of 2008. Can't wait.

 

You don't need a Santa Rosa based Mac to be ready for Leopard, but if you don't need to buy anything right now it can't hurt to wait and see what laptop freshes come out.

The regular MacBook line might not be updated until a while after the MacBook Pro though.

 

Yes, the line will be updated soon. But the current MacBook Pros are solid and fast.

 

Ahhhh, but by Q1 08, there'll be Penryns and possibly the Montevina platform! You'll have to wait more!

 

you'll just have to never buy anything!!!

aaaaaaahhhh!

 

To answer the OP's implicit question, if you buy the current generation of MacBooks, they will certainly work with upcoming Leopard. Conversely, waiting might mean getting better Macbook specs + Leopard preinstalled for the same price.

 

I plan to get a Macbook Pro with Santa Rosa IF they come out by the end of the Summer, I can't wait past then. Hopefully if won't cost a lot more to get Santa Rosa... im on a budget.

 

On your cemetary headstone:

I'm still waiting for the next release.

 

Werd. It happens all the time. But in the case of myself, I'm really more waiting for the GMA x3000 to hit the MB, cause I really don't want to get stuck with the 950. But with a short release cycle that Intel and AMD seem to be shifting to, it's hard to know when to really buy. So really, the answer is just to buy when you need to. If you need it by the end of summer, buy then. If you need it by the end of the year, buy then. If you need it now, buy now. Any laptop will still last at least a couple years of good performance. Sure, I've seen the Core 2 Duo come, and I've seen draft N start taking over for wireless, and I've seen my same laptop get a Quadro FX 3500M, and I've seen the prices go down and go up. But I'm not really missing anything spectacular. I've still got a damn fast processor, and a damn fast machine. Who cares if I didn't get to shave a few seconds off of Super Pi or add a few fps' to Quake 4? I still had a year more of good computing than anyone else who waited. $0.02

 

^^amen to that bro

 

The thing is with roadmaps, you can time your purchases a little better than if you had no information at all. A roadmap shouldn't prevent you from buying all together.

If you know a platform refresh is coming around the same timeframe as when you need something, you can work around that, perhaps delay your purchase slightly, but all for something that you think is worth it.

So at this point, you're looking at hybrid hard drives, draft N, X3000 and a faster FSB. If none of those make a substantial difference in your requirements, then by all means buy now. Don't delay and delay and delay. Chances are, if you're delaying over and over again, you didn't have much need for it in the first place.