Picked up...finally!....the 15 inch  i7 MacBook Pro. Maxed the Ram to 8Gigs and it is sweet. It also has two graphics cards it switches in and out of as needed by the resolution/apps you are working with to save battery juice but I alway seem to be using it plugged into the wall so it doesn't matter.

I am slowly working it into Poser 7 use (the application is killing me because I am just coming out of Poser 4 and unaccustomed to the convoluted P7 yet).

I use the touch pad which, though greater than any other touch pads I have tried working with in the past, still drives me crazy, so I am deciding to get a mouse for some things I just don't seem capable of grasping the use of the pad for.

I got a V600 Epson Scanner and have been doing hi res photorestoration with it using Adobe PhotoShop Elements 6 that came with the scanner, and a Wcom board and  the computer screams through it. Though I m having a real hard time seeing the images on the screen used to a 20 inch monitor on my 8600. But when I can afford I will try getting an extra monitor for it.

Many of the printer drivers are included in the SnowLeopard OS which is way cool. But I'll find out for sure when I try hooking up my printer to it. It worked very quickly with a black toner laser printer so I am sure the color printer hook-up will be just as quick.

I use it to watch streaming videos from Netflix until I can get the Roku box to Wifi my movie experience to my TV set. But with a set of cheap little speakers It seems to work wonderfully.

Yeh, you are right it is expensive as laptops go but as far as I'm concerned concerning Macs (which have always been more expensive than PC's) you get what you pay for and like all other Macs I have owned (starting with the beautiful for it's time IIci) the computing experience on them has always been worth every damn penny.