Planning on getting a new laptop next week, currently i have a 1.25gig iBook and have decided to stick with Apple. Obviously the new MacBook Pros look much nicer, but they also cost more.

Is the Pro worth the premium over the MacBook?

I have noticed that over time my last two iBooks have suffered as the screens fade, will the LED back lighting help?
Is the aluminium more robust than the poycarbonate?
I doubt i would notice the slightly faster processor?

Finally, what is the best way of getting hold of a copy of win XP, or 2000, so i can run Tracklogs, or can Tracklogs run in Wine/Darwine?

I’ve tried running Tracklogs in CrossOver and its not really useable.
My other.5 has a unibody macbook and its seems pretty sturdy and the screen is much better and brighter than my 30 month old black macbook.

my 2yr old macbook (plastic) falling apart at the seams. Would go for the alu version personally.
Oh and whichever you get, buy a few spare Magsafe power adaptors…

Tracklogs isn’t really usable under Wine on my Macbook Pro 2.33Ghz/2Gb RAM. It has a dedicated graphics card and the redraws are really laggy.
Haven’t got around to trying it under Fusion yet, but I expect it would be usable, going by other apps – I game under BootCamp (warhammer)and its just fine.

Tracklogs works fine under Parallels, go for the ali model it’ll take a few more knocks

Tracklogs runs beautifully on VMWare Fusion on both my 2.4 Pro and my wife’s 2.4 white Macbook.

Any of the current machines will handle an XP virtual machine without batting a screenlid.

The Aluminum bodies bend very easily in my sad experience.

I have a 17″ pro, but i had to get it in order to get firewire, I believe the normal macbooks now have firewire anyhow…. seemed apple changed its mind about firewire being obselete…

The plastic cases cracking is a known issue with those. If you ask nicely at an apple store they might fix it foc. Worked for me. The replacement one had a different texture and seems to be faring better

I thought Apple designed things properly? Cracking plastics, bending alu cases….tut tut tut 😆

Someone’s jealous!

😉

How did you guess, I’m currently missing a P key and suffering intermittent HD problems on my PC laptop 😀 Though if I’m honest, it is nearly 9 years old.

Currently only the White MacBook is available, but if you put the RAM up to 4Gb, and spec the 500Gb h/drive it’ll cost £60 more than the base model 13″ Macbook Pro, according to a review in the latest Mac User mag. Speed differences are apparently insignificant in real-world testing. I’d go for a higher spec MacBook on that basis.

You can save a bit by buying the Macbook memory upgrades from Crucial rather than Apple direct.

Huge savings and really simple to upgrade.