Its been 2 or 3 weeks now, and I can honestly say I LOVE this new laptop. I got the new 13" MacBook Pro and its everything I could have wanted and then some. Its not perfect, but nearly.

Ive had my laptop for 3 years, and while it still works well I was kind of ready for a new one. Since I've been teaching most IT classes than anything else, I haven't really been doing much editing, and since I've been studying for even more IT classes, I haven't been taking on much freelance work. I took a careful look at how I've been using my laptop, and I almost never fire up Final Cut any more- its all done on my tower. SO I didnt need Real Ultimate Power™. But I've been spending a lot of time in cafes, and on planes, and sitting in terminals and on hotel beds, and I wanted something smaller. Every time I tried Crystals laptop I thought to myself hm.. this is only a little smaller, but it makes a difference.

So I was already pretty set on buying a 13" aluminum laptop. Just a few things stood in my way- I wanted to make sure it could at least run Final Cut Pro and Motion, and after some testing, found it could- pretty well, in fact! And since it didn't have FireWire I wanted to make sure I could power my USB drives without a power brick, and it could. I also wanted the lightup keyboard but I didnt want to pay extra for the bigger model. And I'd miss the CardBus slot for reading SD cards from my camera but I could always just plug it in with a USB cable. Minor compromises.

Then, Apple goes and blindsides me, and releases a NEW 13" latop... WITH firewire, WITH the lightup keyboard, and... for the first time... WITH an SD card slot! Annnnd its faster... and they DROP the price, to boot. After that, I really couldn't argue any more. Snapped one up. Put my 500GB drive in, and uppded the RAM to 4GB and now its perfect.

It plays Warcraft. It handles final cut. Its got a 500GB drive so It can triple-boot XP, Leopard and Snow Leopard, and its small enough to whip out just about anywhere. It's damn pretty. Oh, and the battery is as good as advertised- I can get 5-6 hours of work done on it, easy. Actual work- with wifi on and everything. Thank you, steve jobs!

Anyone wanna buy a 15" MacBook Pro?