Santa Rosa worth watiing for?

Someone in another thread thought Santa Rosa will come out in May. I will try to wait, one thing I don't want to do is buy a MBP and have an upgrade come out a week later, but I am wondering how much difference it will make. I do mostly wordprocessing, browse the internet, and watch internet video clips (some of some length). Any advice? What about for Leopard?

 

The answer is simple. Waiting to buy a laptop is always the right answer. Computer products go outdated too quickly to buy one any sooner than necessary.

 

For you the difference will be minimal. Certainly not earth shattering, so buy it when you need it or are ready. No matter when you buy something new will come along eventually. Also, it's not like your computer will slow down the day santa rosa comes out. It will be as fast the day after it comes out as the day before.

 

I just bought last week.

One thing to consider, the current MBP computers seem to be fairly well sorted out. No whines, serious screen issues, heat issues, etc.

If they change the case, and more than likely they will, who knows how well they will perform out of the box.

As far as I can tell, Santa Rosa will boost the FSB from 667 to 800. Will incorporate some sort of Flash Ram to speed booting and sleep. The CPUs will probably be somewhat faster but not by much.

I don't see anything revolutionary in this, merely evolutionary. G4 to Core Duo, now, that was worth waiting for. Core 2 Duo to Santa Rosa, not so much.

Your call. If you have a good computer and no real pressing issue to upgrade and the fear of a Rev A. machine does not bother you, then wait.

If you want to get it going today, the current MBPs are pretty solid.

 

Well said.

That's like someone buying a Mac Pro to do surfing, emailing, word processing. To put things in perspective I surf, email, do word processing on a out dated G4 1.25 ghz eMac with 1 gb of memory with no problems. In fact i'm typing this message from it.

I just ordered a ThinkPad T60 instead of waiting for Santa Rosa because right now it's hype and promises. I'm sure Intel will deliver but shortly after the release of Santa Rosa we'll learn about the next Intel break thru.

I buy a lappy every 4-6 years and my 4 year old Dell has developed cracks on the Display hinges, so it's time to buy another lappy which i'll use it till it breaks.

 

At this point, computers are overkill for everyone but audio/video/3d/engineers.

The cheapest Dell you can get your hands on will be more than adequate for normal internet things: e-mail, web surfing, youTube, DVDs, etc.

Unless you have specific home theater needs or are a power user, most of the top models are overkill.

 

I third that opinion. I am buying a very expensive Lenovo Thinkpad T61 because of its WSXGA+ resolution on a 14.1" laptop. I like huge displays for surfing the web, writing papers on Word and working with Excel documents. I do not need the fancy Processor or wireless draft card. I still recommend waiting for the latest technology because it makes existing technology cheaper. I think the current processors will become much cheaper after the new Pro series comes out.

 

Here's a post I made about it a while ago:

 

I decided not to wait for Santa Rosa when I ordered on Friday my very nicely equipped T60, which I saved $633. Even if Santa Rosa causes prices to drop I don't think my T60 will come down in price that where it matches the deal I just got.

If it does no biggie. I do agree with a previous poster who said Santa Rosa is evolutionary not revolutionary and performance gains might not be as big as some think it will.

 

Another way of looking at:

If I waited, I'd still be using my Dell E1505 and WinXP Pro.

I did not wait, and now I'm running Adobe CS3 on a MacBook Pro and dual booting into Vista.

I just bought an Airport Extreme and am running my first wireless network ever and it's Draft N and WPA2.

If I waited, Apple has to announce Santa Rosa, and then they have to ship Santa Rosa. There's a chance I don't actually have this laptop in my hands until late summer, early Fall.

Waiting does drive down prices on existing technology, and the newer technology is almost always better, but then again, what is the cost of waiting 3, 4, 5, or 6 months to get it in your hands?

If you really are a casual user with casual needs, than maybe you can afford to wait, since your PIII 1.13GHz is probably still fast enough to run Word and a web browser.

Waiting makes less sense these days, unless the change is huge like G4 to Core Duo (which still not all that great since Adobe dropped the ball big time on that switch).

LED screens may be worth waiting for, or the first gen might suck.

Flash ram boot might be cool, or it might not matter to you that your laptop boots in 20 seconds instead of 1 minute.

 

If Apple redesigns the case of the Macbook Pro and is much better looking, that might be a justifiable reason to wait. New looks and new hardware, Id say its worth waiting if you can, since were so close.

Either way, the current ones are awesome as well so dont hesitate.

 

Any redesigns from Apple mean that it won't have been as thoroughly tested as the current MBP design. Core Duos were plagued with problems for the longest time, so I don't see why anyone would wait for what could be a similar repeat were Apple to redesign from scratch the MBP. The current C2D MacBook Pros have almost no flaws with them, I don't see why Apple would try to fix what isn't broken!

 

Thanks for all of the sage device. I particularly like the point that they have the bugs worked out of the current MBP. The new ones will probably have some glitches.

 

if i were in apples shoes i would just keep the design of the macbook the same, add some more ports, and offer more screen options.

then when leopard comes out, pair that with a new design and your set.

 

A good bit on Intel's roadmap.

Quad mobile in 2008?

http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/04/16/HNintelbeyondsantarosa_1.html