New laptop!, Squee! Options

[mipadi]

So as some of you may know, I work as a systems programmer/IT manager for an engineering lab at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. I came into work today and lamented to one of the other programmers that I had to do all my development work on my aging iBook, and how I was thinking about getting a new MacBook. So she asked the director of the lab if he'd buy me a laptop, and he said sure, I just had to pick what I wanted and have the purchasing agent sign off on it.

I asked how much money I had to spend, and the other programmer told me I had to spend at least $3000. "Wait, at least? Don't you mean, up to $3000?" I asked. She said no; because of the way purchasing works, I had to spend at least $3000 on my order in order to have it qualify as an "equipment purchase", which avoids some sort of fee imposed by RPI on its labs' purchases.

So I bought a new 13-inch MacBook Pro. It's a pretty decent machine:

• 2.53GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
• 8GB of RAM (Yes, EIGHT f*ckING GIGABYTES. Anything less would've made my order drop below $3000, so I sprang for the $900 RAM upgrade.)
• 256MB nVidia 9400M gfx card
• 500GB hard drive
• dual-layer DVD burner
• iWork '09
• Final Cut Express (since I do some video work in the lab)
• VGA adapter
• DVI adapter
• Accessories:
  • Apple Remote
  • 1TB external hard drive (for Time Machine backups)
  • VMWare Fusion (since I write some software targeting Windows, unfortunately)

Needless to say, I'm pleased as punch.

[sixfive]

They're nice, but long overdue. I've been meaning to upgrade my PC for a few years now. It's got a piece of shit X1350, 3.5 gb ram (I thought they were 4x 1gb sticks, guess not), and a 2.4 core 2 duo. Fortunately, the MOBO supports HD4850's so I'll probably just throw one of those in soon and be in decent shape til' next summer.