retail therapy accomplished

[jazzfish]

A discussion with darkfyre_muse yesterday reminded me to take a closer look at the displays that were being offered. Turns out the only way to get a non-glossy display on a Mac laptop is to spend more money on a larger Pro. And poking at them in the store confirms that the antiglare is o so very much nicer on the eyes. Feh. I was looking forward to a slightly smaller machine but no dice.

So, yay for the Refurbished section of the Apple store, which has provided me with a 15" Macbook Pro that's slightly better than the baseline spec and has an antiglare display, for about what I could have spent on a baseline machine in the store today if they'd had one. (As of early this week $company gets an Apple discount, but it doesn't apply to refurbs.) Which is still more money than I've ever spent on anything that's not a car, by about a factor of four.

Oh well. In theory, and based on what I've heard from just about everyone who has one, assuming I like this computer it'll last me until at least the middle of the next decade.

Now to wait impatiently until the end of next week, and also to see how twitchy buyers' remorse makes me.

Comments

[vond.net]

My only comment is that you may, one day, want to buy a SSD. Otherwise, looks really nice!

Even with a SSD I dunno about it really lasting until 2025 though :)

[rbandrews]

You will not be disappointed in the processor, at least. My week has been all about making heavy mathematical simulations run in faster than real time on machines exactly like that. Today we learned that our app runs, in a VM, at ~80% CPU utilization, on that machine, at about 10 fps. Which, when you consider that it runs at about 5 on an actual PC, and at about 3 on my dual-core MBP, is pretty impressive.

Unrelatedly, on Wednesday it ran at about 4 seconds per frame on everything. I've sped it up a lot this week.

[thanate]

for the record, I got my 15" macbook pro at a moment when they didn't believe in non-glossy screens, and in most of the environments I use it in, I don't find it nearly as irritating as one would expect. (The mall stores are pretty much set up to be the worst kind of environment you're likely to see for that.)

[playing-tragic.livejournal.com]

I've made purchases from the online Apple store's refurbs/open boxed items without any problems. I love profitting from another's buyer's remorse. My Kindle and my Garmin GPS were both open boxed items I got for $80 - $120 less for basically brand new items.

Hadn't realized they discontinued the option of a glossy or anti-glare screen on the non-pro Macbooks. Use to have the choice for an extra $200 even back in the old iBook days, if I remember correctly.

The MacPro 15" is great, but they get HO. A lapdesk or something between it and your lap is strongly recommended.