My old Sony VGN-S150 has met a premature end.

Poisoned by the ice melt dregs of a glass of Coke a Cola spilled into the waiting bottom vents of the case. This went undiscovered for 1-2 hrs, allowing the spill to soak in completely. Cleaning has not yielded even partial success. It simply fails to give any indication of starting up when the power button is pressed.

It's successor a shiny new Mac Book Pro 13 incher.
About the only thing I don't care for is the sharp edge around the perimeter of the palm rest.

Loading Vista into Boot Camp was a breeze. Vista runs surprisingly well on this machine.

Well, the fastest Vista laptop PC Magazine tested in 2007 was a MacBook Pro, so thats not too surprising.

Unfortunately Apple hasn't upgraded to EFI 2.0, so you can't use the EFI boot feature of Vista or Windows 7.

You made a decent choice.

Here's what the competition is up to in their efforts to one-up Apple: HP Envy 13

$500 more expensive than the MBP 13 and doesn't include ethernet nor an optical drive. It does have faster (discrete) graphics and a higher resolution display. But also a slower processor.

The one thing about the Envy that does interest me is the slice battery. It's an extended runtime battery that clips onto the entire bottom of the machine, and blends into the form factor quite well.

I think the Envy 13 was meant to be more of an Air competitor, though it is .8 pounds heavier and ticker overall. And the Air has an entry level price at $300 lower, though that means a slower CPU then the Envy.

Lack of optical drive in the Air hasn't bothered me yet, and I doubt it would bother most people looking at the Envy as a second system to either a more powerful laptop, or their desktop. As for ethernet, the only time I use it is at work due to lack of wireless there. At home, I have a Airport Express N plugged in near where I use the Air, providing slightly more then 100mbit practical bandwidth. Since the included USB dongle only does 10/100, it's the same speed either way.

IMO, its form factor and weight put it completely out of the ballpark of the MBA. I feel the compromises are justified in a machine with the Air's dimensions, but the Envy is easily outclassed by more than one MBP model.

You mentioned the Air. I was in the Apple store dithering between that and the MBP13. In the end it was the the larger battery that tilted me.

I was a little concerned that this happened just before the new year model pc's would be arriving in 3 weeks. But after only a couple days, I've no regrets, and don't expect that any of the "thin n light" machines soon to arrive will change that.

I did have a problem with the included Snow Leopard disk. The MBP would load it, slowly, present the install icon, the process would seem to start but hang with an error. The Staff at the Apple store worked some magic and replaced the disk, which loaded immediately and worked without a hitch.

Net speed is much improved over the Sony.
Comcast speed test:
Download Speed: 8363 kbps (1045.4 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 3726 kbps (465.8 KB/sec transfer rate)

I've seen that test hit nearly 12000 kbps.

The Sony via 802.11g never pulled more than ~4000kbps.

Ok, This is strange...

The Airport card in the MBP connects to my wifi router and shows in the Network Utility a link speed of 144Mbit/s.

But under Boot Camp and Vista the link speed shows as 270Mbit/s.

Each of those numbers could be transitory and temporary, shifting from moment to moment as they renegotiate.

If those numbers are consistently the same after many re-checks, it could be choices made in the drivers. I think the driver software might be in control of the tradeoffs the wireless card makes with relation to speed versus link-stability.

For 802.11n to hit speeds around 270, it has to use wide channels (40mhz) compared to the standard 20mhz space. Per the spec, a router has to stop using wide channels if it senses a conflict, and this is highly likely to happen if you are on 2.4ghz and in an area where your laptop can see other wireless networks.

It's possible your router is trying to use wide channels, and the Windows drivers see that and report the theoretical speed possible, whereas the OS X side may be reporting the actual speed due to dropping down to the standard channel usage.

My AP was set up per this.

So yes it is running wide channels. It also reports on it's status page the rate for each wifi link. Which can be seen to fluctuate.
For the apple side it typically reports 117Mbps.

I'll check the vista side in a bit...

That's why my new Thinkpad X200S laptops have multiple drain holes beneath the keyboard. I haven't tested them yet, but I'm sure my users will.

Too bad I was not informed about netbooks before buying the Thinkpads. They have no drain holes, but at three for the price of a laptop, they could afford a spill or two.

Not so dead after all.

For a lark, I put the battery back in this morning and was greeted with the bios asking for the machine password.

Knowing the hard drive had been removed, I slipped a Ubuntu live boot CD into the machine. It started!

But after installing a hard drive, it didn't fire up.

Ok, something more than water damage is going on.

Since the power button worked, then it didn't, not even a blink, I looked at the ribbon that connects it to the main board. I noticed some breakage right where it bends at the top of the MB socket.

That ribbon is a 10 conductor solid core laminated design, with what seems to be vinyl skins. The socket it inserts into is not a zif socket, so the ribbon is stiffened with a thicker blue plastic shim. It proved possible to cut off the last 1/8", scrape the insulation from the conductors, and everything is good.

I don't regret buying the MBP, it's going to remain my main computer, but what to do now?

If I hadn't bought the Wind nettop, This could have been a decent low power ammo-box case mod home server.

My grand niece seems to be the front runner for hand me down.