Like you say, the buyer, however, is supposed to report this purchase on their Income Tax Return in the states that have a sales tax. The buyer hardly ever does this, which is why states are unhappy. I do not feel bad for the States though.
Yep. I don't shed any tears myself. What's worse is what happened in WA state. They sent Use tax forms to all small businesses. The form threatened an audit if the business didn't send in some money. Turns out the State 'knew' purchases were made across state lines and wanted their chunk.
Imagine the angst if you were a business that made purchases only through online retailers that collected sales tax. The threat of an audit is a very effective too to extort additional funds.
OnSale either doesn't have the Macbook available or their website is messed up. You click on Buy Now/Customize button and you get an error that the page is not found. Not much of incentive to buy from them.
Both MacBook Pro 13" and the new MacBook 13" have:
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.26 GHz
2 GB DDR3
1280 x 800 gloss display LCD
NVIDIA GeForce 9400M
7h hour battery
New touch pad
Apparently, the only differences are:
Aluminum case vs Plastic case
Firewire port present vs No Firewire port
Backlit keyboard vs Regular keyboard
160GB vs 250GB (!!!)
But, one costs 1199.00 (or 1078.00 using AppleInsider's discount) and the other costs 999.00 (or 899.18 using AppleInsider's discount).
Does anyone else here think that Apple should lower the prices for MacBook Pro 13"? Or, at least, start shipping MacBook Pro 13" with 250GB standard?
I went to an Apple Store today and test-drove both and, though, I like the aluminum case, I don't see a point in purchasing it anymore, especially with a hard disk 36% smaller.
Yes, I noticed the exact same thing yesterday. The $1199 MSRP MacBook Pro 13" now seems less of a value when compared to the base MacBook. At the bare minimum, I would think Apple should upgrade the base config to a 250GB HD on the MBP (with no increase in cost). That would be enough to restore the value for me, but I'm very close to making a purchasing decision and the MacBook suddenly seems like a better deal all things considered. The backlit keyboard is the only feature it is sorely missing (for my purposes) and that's hard to justify for the extra $200 or so.
Although, I'm probably going to wait until Black Friday to purchase though. We have Apple EPP discount pricing where I work, and you can double-dip on the Black Friday discount, which (usually) puts the Apple store prices less than MacMall's (and no rebates to deal with). Though, I'm not put off by rebates, I've done them before and always gotten them (eventually).
When you first get your Mac from a shipper, it's wise to clone the boot drive to another drive, option boot and repair permissions on both to verify it's working correctly, then erase with Zero option the original boot drive. Cloning copies the whole drive, programs and structure etc. It works just like the original.
Shippers are rough with parcels, damage to the platter sectors may have occurred during transport or from the factory, even from overseas. Zeroing will map off these bad sectors, giving you a much more reliable computing experience and less glitchy behavior. Later on as the drive fills up, it may come across bad sectors and you'll be wondering WTF? So it's wise to Zero early on with every new drive before using it.
Wow! That's a lot of extra work, seems totally unnecessary for the reason described. The read/write heads on hard drives are parked in a safe spot off the surface of the drives when they're not in use, so normal motion and dropping during transport (assuming the drives aren't in use) have no effect on the surface of the platters (creating bad sectors). And any impacts severe enough to damage the drives would probably shred the box and definitely destroy other componants in the computer as well.
But, of course, there's nothing wrong with having a bootable backup of your drive, it can come in handy for sure.
And of course, bad sectors due exist on pretty much every drive, and new Bad sectors do appear during normal use. Hard drives are designed to deal with them by including spare sectors that can be called into action as new bad sectors appear. My understaning is that most drives (S.M.A.R.T. drives in particular) will remap them on the fly during normal use (it checks every sector used during a write operation).
So it's not necessary to erase the entire drive to remap sectors, and even that will not always "work" completely because sectors can also be marked as "unstable" where they've had a history of unreliability, but the drive will continue to use them (not remap them as "bad") as long as they can still be read.
Wow! That's a lot of extra work, seems totally unnecessary for the reason described. The read/write heads on hard drives are parked in a safe spot off the surface of the drives when they're not in use, so normal motion and dropping during transport (assuming the drives aren't in use) have no effect on the surface of the platters (creating bad sectors). And any impacts severe enough to damage the drives would probably shred the box and definitely destroy other componants in the computer as well.
But, of course, there's nothing wrong with having a bootable backup of your drive, it can come in handy for sure.
And of course, bad sectors due exist on pretty much every drive, and new Bad sectors do appear during normal use. Hard drives are designed to deal with them by including spare sectors that can be called into action as new bad sectors appear. My understaning is that most drives (S.M.A.R.T. drives in particular) will remap them on the fly during normal use (it checks every sector used during a write operation).
So it's not necessary to erase the entire drive to remap sectors, and even that will not always "work" completely because sectors can also be marked as "unstable" where they've had a history of unreliability, but the drive will continue to use them (not remap them as "bad") as long as they can still be read.
I've found that even with so called "smart drives" and park-able heads, that zeroing each and every new drive still increases my computers reliability.
I don't know the exact reason why, as this would require doing reliability tests on hundreds of drives for hundreds of hours, but perhaps with smart drives it allows drive makers to relax their standards as they certainly can't take the time to verify each and every sector before shipment.
It could be I'm catching and correcting a lot of errors before it has a chance to screw with my data.
Cloning seems a lot of work, but it really isn't, the computer does all the work, but when your drive fails it's a blessing.
Zeroing seems like a lot of work too, but it certainly erases any "crap", either placed on their by drive makers or on the drive by malicious means.
I remember all those iPods that shipped with a PC virus, mine didn't get it because I always zero the drive first.
Comments
Like you say, the buyer, however, is supposed to report this purchase on their Income Tax Return in the states that have a sales tax. The buyer hardly ever does this, which is why states are unhappy. I do not feel bad for the States though.
Yep. I don't shed any tears myself. What's worse is what happened in WA state. They sent Use tax forms to all small businesses. The form threatened an audit if the business didn't send in some money. Turns out the State 'knew' purchases were made across state lines and wanted their chunk.
Imagine the angst if you were a business that made purchases only through online retailers that collected sales tax. The threat of an audit is a very effective too to extort additional funds.
Both MacBook Pro 13" and the new MacBook 13" have:
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.26 GHz
2 GB DDR3
1280 x 800 gloss display LCD
NVIDIA GeForce 9400M
7h hour battery
New touch pad
Apparently, the only differences are:
Aluminum case vs Plastic case
Firewire port present vs No Firewire port
Backlit keyboard vs Regular keyboard
160GB vs 250GB (!!!)
But, one costs 1199.00 (or 1078.00 using AppleInsider's discount) and the other costs 999.00 (or 899.18 using AppleInsider's discount).
Does anyone else here think that Apple should lower the prices for MacBook Pro 13"? Or, at least, start shipping MacBook Pro 13" with 250GB standard?
I went to an Apple Store today and test-drove both and, though, I like the aluminum case, I don't see a point in purchasing it anymore, especially with a hard disk 36% smaller.
Yes, I noticed the exact same thing yesterday. The $1199 MSRP MacBook Pro 13" now seems less of a value when compared to the base MacBook. At the bare minimum, I would think Apple should upgrade the base config to a 250GB HD on the MBP (with no increase in cost). That would be enough to restore the value for me, but I'm very close to making a purchasing decision and the MacBook suddenly seems like a better deal all things considered. The backlit keyboard is the only feature it is sorely missing (for my purposes) and that's hard to justify for the extra $200 or so.
Although, I'm probably going to wait until Black Friday to purchase though. We have Apple EPP discount pricing where I work, and you can double-dip on the Black Friday discount, which (usually) puts the Apple store prices less than MacMall's (and no rebates to deal with). Though, I'm not put off by rebates, I've done them before and always gotten them (eventually).
For the more advanced among us:
When you first get your Mac from a shipper, it's wise to clone the boot drive to another drive, option boot and repair permissions on both to verify it's working correctly, then erase with Zero option the original boot drive. Cloning copies the whole drive, programs and structure etc. It works just like the original.
Shippers are rough with parcels, damage to the platter sectors may have occurred during transport or from the factory, even from overseas. Zeroing will map off these bad sectors, giving you a much more reliable computing experience and less glitchy behavior. Later on as the drive fills up, it may come across bad sectors and you'll be wondering WTF? So it's wise to Zero early on with every new drive before using it.
Wow! That's a lot of extra work, seems totally unnecessary for the reason described. The read/write heads on hard drives are parked in a safe spot off the surface of the drives when they're not in use, so normal motion and dropping during transport (assuming the drives aren't in use) have no effect on the surface of the platters (creating bad sectors). And any impacts severe enough to damage the drives would probably shred the box and definitely destroy other componants in the computer as well.
But, of course, there's nothing wrong with having a bootable backup of your drive, it can come in handy for sure.
And of course, bad sectors due exist on pretty much every drive, and new Bad sectors do appear during normal use. Hard drives are designed to deal with them by including spare sectors that can be called into action as new bad sectors appear. My understaning is that most drives (S.M.A.R.T. drives in particular) will remap them on the fly during normal use (it checks every sector used during a write operation).
So it's not necessary to erase the entire drive to remap sectors, and even that will not always "work" completely because sectors can also be marked as "unstable" where they've had a history of unreliability, but the drive will continue to use them (not remap them as "bad") as long as they can still be read.
Wow! That's a lot of extra work, seems totally unnecessary for the reason described. The read/write heads on hard drives are parked in a safe spot off the surface of the drives when they're not in use, so normal motion and dropping during transport (assuming the drives aren't in use) have no effect on the surface of the platters (creating bad sectors). And any impacts severe enough to damage the drives would probably shred the box and definitely destroy other componants in the computer as well.
But, of course, there's nothing wrong with having a bootable backup of your drive, it can come in handy for sure.
And of course, bad sectors due exist on pretty much every drive, and new Bad sectors do appear during normal use. Hard drives are designed to deal with them by including spare sectors that can be called into action as new bad sectors appear. My understaning is that most drives (S.M.A.R.T. drives in particular) will remap them on the fly during normal use (it checks every sector used during a write operation).
So it's not necessary to erase the entire drive to remap sectors, and even that will not always "work" completely because sectors can also be marked as "unstable" where they've had a history of unreliability, but the drive will continue to use them (not remap them as "bad") as long as they can still be read.
I've found that even with so called "smart drives" and park-able heads, that zeroing each and every new drive still increases my computers reliability.
I don't know the exact reason why, as this would require doing reliability tests on hundreds of drives for hundreds of hours, but perhaps with smart drives it allows drive makers to relax their standards as they certainly can't take the time to verify each and every sector before shipment.
It could be I'm catching and correcting a lot of errors before it has a chance to screw with my data.
Cloning seems a lot of work, but it really isn't, the computer does all the work, but when your drive fails it's a blessing.
Zeroing seems like a lot of work too, but it certainly erases any "crap", either placed on their by drive makers or on the drive by malicious means.
I remember all those iPods that shipped with a PC virus, mine didn't get it because I always zero the drive first.