Well, to be specific: $2,824.00 before tax.
I upgraded to the 5400rpm drive and to one 512MB Ram module so I could upgrade it with another 512 at 1/3 the price of what apple is selling them for.

It is a steep price, but you are definitely paying for a lot of performance and feature upgrades with that price. My favorite of which being the backlit keyboard with ambient light sensor.

If I could, I'd wait for the G5 powerbook, but those could be anywhere from 4 months to over a year out. And, with my old Ti Powerbook screen going out I had no choice. I got a full 4 years of use out of my old powerbook without noticing much of a performance issue until only recently (performance did improve A LOT, however from os 10.2 to 10.3). Had it not been for the screen going bad (which was actually a result of my gf dropping it a while back) I would probably still be using it.

Also, I just felt like I needed a newer accessory to go along with my iPod mini!

- trs