There's also the issue of depreciation. In 3 years, you'll be able to get about $10 for your Toshiba, whereas a 15" MBP will probably sell for $700-1200 depending on the model. The cost of ownership is much closer than the price tag would indicate.

Good point, but I keep laptops until they die. Never have sold one. Do used Macs really keep that much of their value? I can't imagine spending that much on any 3 year old box (laptop or desktop).

The thing is, it's rare for a Mac laptop to die. I still have a perfectly functioning 12" powerbook that won't die despite all my attempts to kill it.

Unless you had a MBP from the generation right before uni-body. I know a lot of people (myself included) who've had the logic board burn out right around the 2 year mark.

Mine, too. I would have liked it to last longer; I'm not a fan of the zero-button trackpads.

Count me in on this one. Paid $800 to replace the logic board on this macbook from 2008.

the two macs i've sold:

2003 aluminum PowerBook: paid $2800, sold after 5 years for $1000

2007 iMac: paid $1300, sold after 1 year for $1300. (It was the previous gen when I bought it, so that worked out really well.)

I bought one of the first 15" LED backlit MacBook Pros in 2007 for ~$2000 and sold it for $1000 a few months ago. That might not sound amazing until you learn that my wife dropped it down our staircase and it had a giant dent in the side. You can sell Macs like that - I don't hear of people buying smashed up PC notebooks for anywhere near premium prices :-)

I have a Studio XPS 16 on the way (RGBLCD @1920x1080). It was about $1500 after coupons and it blows these MacBook Pros out of the water (a lesser configured MBP runs about $2300). Apple's actions last week had me ordering the Dell Friday morning.

Just looked at the Studio XPS 16 - sweet. A bit off topic, but Windows 7 is actually OK. For work using platform agnostic IDEs (for me, this is IntelliJ for Java/Scala/Clojure/JRuby), the choice of OS does not matter much, so at least for my work load I don't even have to boot to Ubuntu all of the time.

Arent you lucky to get a couple of hours battery life with those? That would drive me nuts.

If I can get 3-4 hours I'll be happy. It will be my new mobile workstation that I can use at the office, home and sometimes while travelling. I have a Vaio i3 14" if I need to do extended work, but the lack of resolution and smaller keyboard on the Vaio doesn't lend itself to long coding sessions.

My last hacking laptop was a Vostro 1500 with a 1680x1050 resolution. The 9 cell battery lasted about 4 hours while coding, so I carried two of them. I may do the same with the Studio XPS 16.

I was looking at HP Envy - it's more than $1500, but seems nicer than MBP and had i7 since launch in autumn.

I just got mine, returning it this week. It's an amazing machine if you don't plan on using Linux. The screen is so much better than a MacBook Pro.

what's wrong with using linux on it? some drivers not available?

Something to do with the boot BIOS. I don't have the external HD and could not boot off of bootable usb sticks, or the internal compact flash. Wubi wouldn't even work. Some people have been able to install but I think all of them have the external dvd which I think is ESATA? Just google envy15 linux and you will find people with a whole host of issues trying to install linux on this thing.