17'' vs. 15'' for college, and 17'' LED display speculation

[ibell63]

I plan to order a MacbookPro for college tomorrow, and I am leaning towards the 17'' but I was wondering what you guys thought about what size would be good for a college student with an IT major. I thinking i'm gonna need the 250 GB hard drive so I can have all my Windows XP and Mac OS X stuff all in one place, but I don't like the idea of having the CCFL backlight as it wears out over time.

Does anyone think that apple will have LEDs in the 17'' screen anytime soon? (ie. next 2 weeks, or more speciffically WWDC)

 

[elithrar]

I wouldn't expect LED displays in the 17" for at least another two months or so; Apple will likely be waiting on a price drop and availability rise before including them on the 17" MBP.

 

[SpaceJello]

17" LED would be earliest later this year, i dont think it will come up anytime soon. As for the 250G, its 4200rpm. I would suggest getting the 160 and get external drives. You will probably need them with all the computer stuff you are doing in IT. More importantly the speed.

 

[tmoney468]

I wouldn't worry about the CCFL light "wearing" out...it will last for many more years than you'll probably own/use your laptop. As others have suggested, it's not really known when the 17" LEDs will be released..we'll probably hear of Apple ordering 17" LED monitors sometime but there hasn't really been anything yet. Perhaps around the release of Leopard?

 

[macjay]

There's no chance that Apple will update the 17" MBP to LED screens in the next two weeks.

15" vs 17" is a personal decision, but I consider the 17" kind of a specialty computer. I'd go 15" unless there is some aspect of the 17" that you specifically need.