MacBook On The Way

I’ve finally clicked the “Buy Now” button and followed through to order the MacBook 2.4GHz. It will be delivered in a couple of days. It has taken me quite a long while to decide on going ahead with the MacBook. Originally, I was actually looking at the MacBook Air. Then, there was the consideration of, if I were to get the MacBook, whether or not to wait for the upcoming model refresh. Well, here’s the story of how I ended up clicking “Buy Now”.

The MacBook Air was revealed at MacWorld Expo on January 15 this year: Steve Jobs pulled out the MacBook Air from a standard office Manila envelope at his keynote speech. It was simply spectacular, and I’m sure many people were simply awed. The MacBook Air is 0.16″ at the thinnest point, 0.76″ at the thickest, and features a full 13.3″ LED screen and full-sized keyboard. Some people complained about the lack of ports. There’s just 1 USB, no ethernet, no firewire, and no built-in CD/DVD-ROM drive.

These are not real problems for me, because I hardly have any cables (other than the power cord) connected to my existing notebook anyway, and I rarely use the DVD-ROM drive. But I’m not so sure about paying S$2988 for a notebook with a 1.6GHz CPU. The new MacBooks announced on February 26 seem much more attractive, particularly since they cost significantly less. The MacBook Air’s thinness was certainly cool, but overall it was still pricey for its feature set.

There’s actually one little thing that seldom gets mentioned about the MacBook Air: The lack of a Kensington security lock. Although not a “must-have” kind of show stopper, it’s certainly something I find useful and much appreciated,

So, I went on to look at the MacBooks. The February 26 model refresh did not include a price cut in the US, but I guess with the falling US dollar against the Singapore dollar, there was a $200 or $300 price drop in Singapore. According to MacRumors Buyer’s Guide, the MacBook averages 192 days between refresh. It’s about 60 days now, so they do recommend it as a good time to buy.

Unfortunately, there is much speculation that the MacBook would be updated sooner this time around. MacRumors reported that the February 26 update was likely due to Intel’s aggressive schedule to phase out the older 65nm Merom CPU chips, thus forcing Apple to move on to the new 45nm Penryn CPU chips to maintain proper supply. If we count backward 192 days from 1 November 2007 (the previous refresh), we’d expect the next refresh to come around 11 May 2008. Indeed, the speculations are that Apple will announce some updates in June, including design changes to the MacBook which had remained the same ever since their introduction in May 2006.

Basically, the MacBook refresh on 26 February introduced new 45nm Penryn CPU chips which consume less power and run cooler. This has reportedly translated to battery life increase of 7% to 15% (37 to 67 minutes). The processor speeds have been upped slightly (2.1GHz to 2.4GHz), and the 2.4GHz models come with 2GB of RAM standard.

Considering now the stronger Singapore dollar, the prices in Singapore have been adjusted downward. So it looks like we’re now paying less to get more. Note, however, that although processor speeds are upped, the L2 cache has come down from 4MB to 3MB, so the new models don’t clearly have a CPU performance advantage.

What about the MacBook Pros? Well, budget is one issue for me. I’m not willing to shell out the money for the MacBook Pro. I tend to focus on the $$$/value factor, taking care to count only the values that actually matter to me. I do not appreciate the MacBook Pro’s dedicated graphics processor, and I actually dislike its bigger bulk. (Yes, I love the MacBook Air’s portability, but I guess I can’t have everything… low price and ultra-thin ultra-light.)