Had to Buy MacBook Pro

All the Mac news and rumor sites are pointing to new MacBook Pros in the very near future. For me, I couldn’t wait for the future on the eve of our trip to China, so I caved in and purchased a new MacBook Pro from the Apple Store at Valley Fair. Yes, the same Valley Fair where my hubcaps were stolen yesterday afternoon. This time, I went under the cover of darkness; if you can’t see my hubcaps, you can’t steal them!

There’s plenty of reasons why I need to bring a new laptop with me on this trip, the primary one being that we want to export HDV footage from our camera to the laptop for backup purposes. The stock 15″ MBP that I got has a 160GB hard drive, which is a little too small for my tastes. With all my apps installed, including Aperture 2.0 and a stripped down version of Final Cut Pro Studio 2 (no Motion, Color, Soundtrack, etc.), I have about 120GB free. That’s good for about 10 tapes of HDV footage, so it looks like I might bring an external hard drive with me on Friday.

After buying the MBP, I went to the Valley Fair Mall Security. I didn’t want to go walking around the mall with my new computer (the Apple Store didn’t have a large enough bag), so left it with Josh, the salesperson who helped me the day before, and went to the third floor where Mall Security was located. The security director was not there, so I’ll have to call him up in the morning. I did see all of the security monitors in the room. The lady working there said that they keep a rolling 30-day video archive. If my car was in sight of their CCTV, I might be able to see the evildoers who hijacked my hubcaps! Though I’ll probably never find out who did it, I just want to get a glimpse of them. I’ll be all Wrath of Khan on them if I ever see them, “I never forget a face!”

My first experience with the MBP tonight wasn’t very positive. I started a Software Update process and within seconds, I had my first kernel panic! After a reboot, everything was fine. Knock on wood before I go to China!