Opinions on shipping window of Merom in Macbook Pro?

I'm pretty confident in my decision to delay the purchase of my first Apple machine in order to wait for the Merom, at least for the time being. What I wanted to gauge from the posters here is when you feel, at the very earliest(and conversely, the very latest), that Apple will begin shipping with these processors?

 

The very earliest I would say is an announcement in August at WWDC with shipping in quantities beginning to middle of September. Latest? January. I would expect closer to September. They need to do something to differentiate them from the MacBooks and Core2Duo would be it.

 

Yeah, I don't think you should play the waiting game because after the shipment of Merom in late 06, intel will be releasing a new processor in early 07 thats 64bit and has a faster FSB and double the cache size, IIRC

If you think you can wait, then I'd definitely wait for the next next intel chip, lol

i was going to buy a decked out iMac 20' but decided to get a MacBook instead, to possibly hold me over until intel releases its new 64bit processors, hopefully i can wait till 2007, but I'll probably get the iMac in Sept or Dec.

 

just found a link: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/01/16/intel_centrino_roadmap/

"At launch, Merom will maintain Napa's 667MHz frontside bus speed, but come Santa Rosa, the FSB clock will be upped to 800MHz. Merom will provide 4MB of L2 cache, up from Core Duo's 2MB."

Santa Rosa comes out in H1 of 2007

oh yeah, btw, if you buy between now and mid september you get $180 off an ipod nano 5gig or ipod video

buy the apple now and enjoy it! the macbook is my first mac ever and i LOVE IT, i installed winxp on it with bootcamp and i dont know why! it was one of the first things i did and now i cant even remember the last time i booted into windows!

also, the ipod video was an awesome extra, ive never really cared for mp3 players and have been given three free mp3 player hand me downs by my family, Dell DJ's, so this is my first iPod and i absolutely love it, podcasts are amazing

i think you'll be happy with it no matter what, they also tend to keep a good resale value so if you want the latest and greatest you can always sell it on ebay and buy a newer one

In May I decided on getting an iMac 20', but knowing that 64bit intel chips are coming out within a few months I decided to wait, it was an agonizing month until i gave in and bout my MacBook

but then again i only use my macbook for surfing and school work, so i dont really need 64bit all that bad

 

I am also on my first mac and totally agree! I rarely use Windows now. OS X is amazing! For the OP, don't wait just get it! You will not regret it.

 

Any tips cashmonee?

i finally discovered what Handbrake is and apple + option + esc = alt + ctrl + del

software downloads for me so far are azureus, adium, limewire, firefox, thunderbird, and im still trying out ipod video converters

 

I really appreciate everyone's input here. That was a great link ael719...definitely altered my outlook a bit and always good to learn some new tidbits...I know that there is always going to be something that's greater than what I've got, but I presumed Merom to be a bit more than simply a stopgap...I figured it'd plateau for at least a little while, jeez.
These last few weeks have been simply agonizing, and waiting until September to get something so incremental may not be worth it, but then again, I can't wait a full year for Santa Rosa either. We'll see...

 

It matters on how long you want to keep your laptop and remain "up to date."

If you want a laptop that lasts five years, you'll want to wait for Merom. Anything less, than the current macbooks will be fine.

You have to remember that Intel and AMD are trying to sell you processors...they try to make you believe things are more desirable than they are. More cache is only beneficial if you are pushing huge files around (it's basically a buffer for the CPU). 64-bit is only beneficial if a.) you are running HUGE programs b.) certain softwares are only released in 64-bit (unlikely for 5 years imo, maybe only cutting edge software will break that rule).

If this is a laptop for just email/word/putting around, then a 1yr old laptop would probably even be fine. But why settle on the minivan for grocerygetting when you can buy a new '06 700hp lamborghini...

Just don't let the numbers fool you. Faster is better...it's just not always necessary. I'll be waiting for merom though...