Are both the new MacBook series worth buying now?

[Mr. MacBook]

Face the facts, the old MacBook series was overpriced apple tax, as some people call it(i dont call it apple tax because your paying to have a machine that doesent crash) but if all the components were added together, you certainly wouldnt have a $2799 buck machine.

And the $1099 MacBook was the worst, with 60GB HD and 1GB RAM, not even a superdrive.

Now that they've bumped it up, what do you think of the "apple tax"? They upgraded MBP HD on the 15" to 160, gave 2GB to the $1999 MacBook Pro, upped the processors, and for the MacBook Family,

they increased stock base model to 1GB ram standard from 512 and upped the HD to 80GB, while making the processor 0.17GHz faster and raised the other models HDs by 40GB and gave them a 0.16GHz processor upgrade.

Are they still overpriced too much? No doubt you can get a cheaper dell machine, but i think the component cost is nearing the retail price.

 

[Sopranino]

Face the facts, the old MacBook series was overpriced apple tax, as some people call it(i dont call it apple tax because your paying to have a machine that doesent crash) but if all the components were added together, you certainly wouldnt have a $2799 buck machine.

And the $1099 MacBook was the worst, with 60GB HD and 1GB RAM, not even a superdrive.

Now that they've bumped it up, what do you think of the "apple tax"? They upgraded MBP HD on the 15" to 160, gave 2GB to the $1999 MacBook Pro, upped the processors, and for the MacBook Family,

they increased stock base model to 1GB ram standard from 512 and upped the HD to 80GB, while making the processor 0.17GHz faster and raised the other models HDs by 40GB and gave them a 0.16GHz processor upgrade.

Are they still overpriced too much? No doubt you can get a cheaper dell machine, but i think the component cost is nearing the retail price.

If you go to Dell's website and configure one of their systems to come out as close as possible to either a MB or a MBP you will arrive at a cost that is very close, one person on this forum has already done exactly that and ended up around 100 dollars cheaper for the Dell.

In reference to the 'overpriced' older Macs, here again if you do a price comparison based on the same components you would have found that other brands come out quite close in price.

Sopranino

 

[Igantius]

From a UK point of view, the MBs were pretty competively priced already - the last update prices were cut, so no I don't think they are/were overpriced. When I was comparing prices recently to the entry-level, the equivalent Dell Model was £25 (so $50) cheaper.

A major thing you fail to mention (but you're hardly alone in this!) is the entry-level machine now has double the L2 cache - a very nifty boost to performance. I would also argue, however (in your favour), that the mid-range machine now has less bang-for-your-buck compared to the lower-end machine than previously.

Whereas quite a few people were disappointed that the last update didn't have FW800, video cards, SR, built-in jetpacks etc etc, I'm with Mr Moore on this one:

http://www.macopinion.com/index.php/site/more/is_now_a_good_time_to_buy_a_macbook/

 

[robrose20]

I think they are worth buying. If you equip a Dell laptop with similar features of the macbook (inspiron) or macbook pro (lattitude) the price difference in negligible. I think the pricing is reasonable for what you get. Mac users tend to use their machines longer than PC users (average 5 to 6 years). I have had a quicksilver for 5 years and it still works great.

Love my new MBP...