Macbook Pro (Terrible name!) Pricing

Scráib · 11-01-2006 2:08pm #1

Okay I know this is being discussed in another thread right now, but I'd like to start a thread dedicated to this, namely the pricing for the Macbook.

Ok I'll be buying one for definite in a few months. Only question is from where? I went onto the Irish Apple store (for education, with the discount no less) and priced a fully loaded Macbook. €3,055.21.

The equivalent of that, with all the same specs, from the American Apple store, with no discount, worked out as $2,948. Thats €2,438.60. Thats an unbeliveable difference!

So my question is this; would shipping costs from the US to here bump up the price a lot? Because if they didn't I'm definitely getting the powerbook from the US store. Advice/comments?

Gordon · 11-01-2006 2:10pm

I thought they didn't ship outside the US.

Crap name, I agree. Shame they've lost the titanium colour too.

dory · 11-01-2006 2:58pm

Ya, everyone seems to be giving out about the colour. I have a powerbook and they look the same colour to me.

The thing Im wondering about is the bus speed. It seems to be the biggest difference I can see between the macbook pro and my powerbook. Anyone know what that does?

dory · 11-01-2006 2:59pm

Oh and about the pricing. I think you'd have to know someone in America and get it shipped to them. Fairly sure you have to buy off the Apple store in your own country.

Scráib · 11-01-2006 3:50pm

You will need an American address to ship to and an american credit card to pay for it.

Ah...:( It stands to reason though. Guess I'll be going local after all!

kdouglas · 11-01-2006 5:05pm

odds are even if you managed to get one from apple.com you'll get hit with customs charges thatll end up bringing the price right back to the equivalent from apple ireland.

was going to guy a 12" powerbook myself, but i may just shell out the extra couple of hundred and get the macbook pro.

also, not wanting to highjack the thread but has anyone heard anything about the battery life on the new macbook pro?
i know the powerbook has a 5->5+1/2 hour battery life, but see nothing for the macbook, i assume its somewhere in the same region, id hate to see it slashed to 2-3 hours or something crap like that, the battery life was one of the reasons i want a powerbook/macbook

irishguy · 11-01-2006 5:10pm

Scr&#225 wrote: »

Okay I know this is being discussed in another thread right now, but I'd like to start a thread dedicated to this, namely the pricing for the Macbook.

Ok I'll be buying one for definite in a few months. Only question is from where? I went onto the Irish Apple store (for education, with the discount no less) and priced a fully loaded Macbook. €3,055.21.

The equivalent of that, with all the same specs, from the American Apple store, with no discount, worked out as $2,948. Thats €2,438.60. Thats an unbeliveable difference!

So my question is this; would shipping costs from the US to here bump up the price a lot? Because if they didn't I'm definitely getting the powerbook from the US store. Advice/comments?

Are you sure the colour has changed they look the same to me. Also if you run virtualPC can you write to an NTFS usb drive ?

contact23 · 11-01-2006 5:41pm

bout the battery life in your dreams 5+ hours, my 12 inch PB gets a max of 3.5 hrs on low drain. does anyone know if as the architecture has changed can the new pb pro run all the same programs as the de owl one?

babypink · 11-01-2006 9:25pm

yeah it can.....PowerPC binaries will use emulation called Rosetta (it'll run seamlessly in the background) to run apps like Office and Photoshop until the heads responsible release native binaries for intel. Once they do...the apps will be Universal binaries able to run natively on both PowerPC and Intel Macs

monkeyfudge · 11-01-2006 9:33pm

contact23 wrote:

bout the battery life in your dreams 5+ hours, my 12 inch PB gets a max of 3.5 hrs on low drain. does anyone know if as the architecture has changed can the new pb pro run all the same programs as the de owl one?

haha... that made me laugh out loud alright. 3 and a bit hours was the best I ever got. Now that my Powerbook is over 2 years old I get about 30 minutes out of it.

Scráib>> How are you getting a price of €3,055.21? What are you adding on to it? I'm getting a price of about €2500 with the educational discount. That's the 1.83GHz Intel Core model with 1 GB of RAM.

Clank · 11-01-2006 11:08pm

I was getting 4.5hrs+ for round the first 6months.
Now its a year and a half old I get about 1.5 hours.

Dr_Teeth · 12-01-2006 12:55am

The prices aren't too different:

1.67Ghz laptop is 1999 dollars which is 1646 euros. The Irish ex VAT price is 1800

1.83Ghz laptop is 2499 dollars which is 2058 euros. The Irish ex VAT price is 2250

So, there's a 150-200 euro difference, comparing like with like. Obviously if you can get one from the states without paying sales tax or import duty go for it.

I won't be paying VAT on mine as it'll be a work machine, so I'm happy to order one in here.

Teeth.

K.O.Kiki · 12-01-2006 2:41am

Here's how you save money: get extra RAM from elsewhere!
Seems these new macBooks take PC2-5300 DDR2 200-pin SODIMMs, so get it from Crucial -- bang, €200 saved!

DannyD · 12-01-2006 8:20am

Dr_Teeth wrote:

The prices aren't too different:

1.67Ghz laptop is 1999 dollars which is 1646 euros. The Irish ex VAT price is 1800

1.83Ghz laptop is 2499 dollars which is 2058 euros. The Irish ex VAT price is 2250

So, there's a 150-200 euro difference, comparing like with like. Obviously if you can get one from the states without paying sales tax or import duty go for it. I won't be paying VAT on mine as it'll be a work machine, so I'm happy to order one in here.

Teeth.

Yeah that may be great for you but regular consumers are still paying 700Euro more.It's what comes out of my pocket that I care about, not what comes out of yours.

K.O.Kiki · 12-01-2006 11:09am

Aye, it's a bitch. See if you can find someone who'll order for you to get a discount (that's what I did -- and don't I love it

)
(ps: I can't get you a discount cos my source left Apple)

BTW, aren't the OSx86 machines only shipping in February?

Scráib · 12-01-2006 2:06pm

Scráib>> How are you getting a price of €3,055.21? What are you adding on to it? I'm getting a price of about €2500 with the educational discount. That's the 1.83GHz Intel Core model with 1 GB of RAM.

Well I'm going for the top end model. 1.83Ghz, 2gb RAM, 7200rpm 100GB Hard drive, and a carry case too. I'll probably have enough saved about August I'd say.

SouperComputer · 12-01-2006 5:32pm

BTW, aren't the OSx86 machines only shipping in February?

Aye and last week on aerlingus flights to JFK in feb were €120 each way!

Doctor Benway · 12-01-2006 10:54pm

SouperComputer wrote:

Aye and last week on aerlingus flights to JFK in feb were €120 each way!

That's what I was going to suggest. I got my powerbook (15" G4) in the New York store a little over 2 years ago. I think it cost something like $1999 + sales tax, but with the exchange rates at the time, I worked out that I saved in and around a grand.

A night in a cheap hotel and the return flights should still come out cheaper, if you can book far enough in advance.

One tip if you do decide to go down this route. Bring a case for the laptop, or buy one over there, and ditch all the packaging behind you. That way you should be able to bluff your way through customs if you're stopped (although if you get the flight back that gets in first thing in the morning, chances are there'll be no one there anyway).

Hugh_C · 14-01-2006 1:20am

Scr&#225 wrote: »

The equivalent of that, with all the same specs, from the American Apple store, with no discount, worked out as $2,948.

The US Store doesn't add Sales Tax. It might be trying to buy it in somewhere like Delaware or somewhere qwith low sales tax. So the difference isn't all that great after all. Pretty close really.

If you manage to purchase it in the US and and ship it through FedEx / whatever, you'll be hit for duty, which will be unpleasant.

Chardee MacDennis · 14-01-2006 12:20pm

i bought my powerbook new form ebay last year for $1300 - and then paid import duty and customs on it of ~€300 still worked out WAY cheaper than the irish apple store and i never had a problem.

Hugh_C · 15-01-2006 6:51pm

Call_me_al wrote:

i bought my powerbook new form ebay last year for $1300 - and then paid import duty and customs on it of ~€300 still worked out WAY cheaper than the irish apple store and i never had a problem.

You were lucky I guess. I'd find it hard to part with $1300 on eBay unless I knew it wasn't a scam (of which there are hundreds). I'm a bit suspicious of prices which look too low. Was this from a provate seller or a store?

hc

case_sensitive · 16-01-2006 10:51am

http://us.acer.com/acerpanam/page4.do?dau22.oid=14568&UserCtxParam=0&GroupCtxParam=0&dctx1=25&CountryISOCtxParam=US&LanguageISOCtxParam=en&crc=1074370188

Hmmm, the same OEM? Check out the specs, look familiar? It's even got a camera in the hinge
I bet it's heaps cheaper than Apple's offering too..

Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional; Intel® Core™ Duo Processor T2500 (2MB L2 cache, 2.0GHz, 667MHz FSB); 2GB (1/1) DDR2 667 SDRAM; 120GB SATA hard drive, 5400RPM; modular Super-Multi (DVD+R, DVD-R, DVD-RAM) drive; 5-in-1 card reader; 15.4" WSXGA+ (1680 x 1050) TFT display; ATI® MOBILITY™ RADEON® X1600 graphics, 256MB DDR; 802.11a/b/g WLAN, Bluetooth™, gigabit LAN, V.92 modem

Hugh_C · 16-01-2006 2:45pm

case_sensitive wrote:

I bet it's heaps cheaper than Apple's offering too..

Probably. Only problem is it doesn't have OS X I guess.

case_sensitive · 16-01-2006 3:01pm

for the enterprising, it's not hard to get OSX on a Dell PC, much less on a virtually identical hardware platform.. legally? Oh right yeah, forgot about that.

Ok, to re-interate what I said in another thread, I'd still buy the Apple one, but then again my two computers are a Vaio S-series and an iMac G4, probably the nicest looking examples of each platform.

Hugh_C · 16-01-2006 4:04pm

case_sensitive wrote:

for the enterprising, it's not hard to get OSX on a Dell PC

...until the next software release...

...each iteration brings new hurdles, or so I'm told...

deecom · 17-01-2006 2:02am

I would suggest the same fly to the states and buy one there. Post the box back and bring an empty laptop bag, walk through and no probs! Did it a year and a bit ago with a Powerbook, and it was fine. Oh and you get a free holiday!!:)

By the way dont like the new name either!

Macbook Pro (Terrible name!) Pricing

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