To laptop or not to laptop...

That is the question. My current PowerBook is getting old. It still runs fine, but is a little slow and it is only a matter of time before the hardware begins to break down. And I have money in a grant to buy a new computer for work that I should spend this year...

It will be a Mac. I've always been a Mac person and that isn't about to change. Besides, based on what I've read about Microsoft's to-be-released-sometime-in-the-distant-future Vista OS, I can't imagine why anyone would want to stay with them. I don't want to buy into a very-soon-to-be obsolete technology, so the G4-based iBooks are out. That leaves the dual-core Intel-based MacBook Pro. Adopting Intel CPU's was perhaps the smartest thing Apple has ever done. Well, second smartest after the iPod. Okay, third - Mac OS X has to be the second. But there are two issues with the MacBook Pro.

1) It's a brand new architecture (at least for Apple).
They've only been shipping for a couple of months. I'm always loath to be an early adopter of new computer stuff. Hardware or software. I prefer to let others debug the system first. Although the very few issues I've heard about with the MacBook Pro appear to be minor, and Apple has fixed them rapidly, it's really too early to tell if there will be more major issues... And most software isn't as yet native. Sure, they will run using Apple's Rosetta emulator, but native is better and who knows what kinds of issues will arise as software is converted...

2) The name MacBook Pro really, really sucks.
I mean, really sucks. What were they thinking? They had this nice little two-line thing going. The iBooks and the PowerBooks. The iBooks for your iWorld. The PowerBooks for the "power users" (not that I consider myself one of those). The whole iThing has worked well for Apple. iBooks. iMacs. iPods. And the PowerThing too. You had PowerBooks and PowerMacs (the desktops). And you could imagine at some point Apple developing a new version of the iPod with a fancy 12" fold-out color LCD screen for watching movies. They would call it the PowerPod...

Who in their right mind is going to buy a MacPod Pro? Sounds like some kind of invasive medical device. Especially if you mispronounce it MacProd Po...