I bought the low end MacBook Pro just because I wanted the extra pixel real estate and video card but with only 512 Megs of RAM. Why? Because I bought two 1 Gig sticks online and installed them myself, and I saved almost $300.00! I realize Mac techs think highly of themselves, but come ON. $300.00? It was simply a matter of removing the battery, unscrewing three of the the smallest phillips head screws I’ve seen outside of a pair of eyeglasses, which is a hint for those of you who are going to do this yourself. Take out the 512 stick…which will fit nicely…somewhere…and then install the 2 sticks. Hwalla! 300 bucks in my pocket.

Frequent commentor John may wonder why I didn’t wait for the Core 2 Duo vs the Duo Core. Simple. I can afford this now and I have no idea how much they’re going to raise prices on the new ones. This works, I’m good, beautiful wife isn’t upset about the cost of this toy.

Okay, first impressions. As always, the packaging for all things Mac rocks. A lot of thought goes into it. There’s an elegance to the packaging that says, “This is going to be cool.” Even at the Apple Retail Stores, have you seen the bags they put your stuff in? It’s a plastic backpack! Even their bags are functional! Okay, I’ll stop. On the flip side of the store, the checkout clerk is NOT a conceirge, okay? They’re checkout clerks!

Open the box, take out the computer. Figure out the power cord because…it’s a bit different but it’s very cool. Plug it in, open it up, turn it on. English please. My name. My address. Yes I do. No I don’t. Why yes, that is my home wireless network, please connect to it, enter password. Do I have a dot Mac account or did I purchase a dot Mac box? Why yes, yes I did. Authenticate. Coolness. New email. Your welcome.

It’s thinner and lighter than my Toshiba. It starts MUCH faster. It opens applications MUCH faster. Web pages seem to FLY open. Even kludgey graphic heavy ones. I’m smiling.

Now all I have to do is read the two books I bought at the Apple Store today to figure out what the hell I’m doing and how everything works. That should take all of…hmmm, two weeks?

UPDATE: ARGH!!!!!!

Oh well, that’s what I get for thinkin’.