Macintoshes are the BMWs of the computer world. Everyone wants one (okay, not everyone), but not everyone can afford one. They look great and generally work very well. When you look at things like “total cost of ownership”, a Mac may actually save you money in the long term, but not everyone can pony up the upfront money so that they can save in the long term. Even if you can, it’s nice to save a few bucks if you can.

Apple exercises tight control over Macintosh hardware prices, so you won’t usually find a new Mac discounted by more than a few dollars. But you may well find decent rebates and bundles and special pricing from Apple itself. Here are a few of the things I’ve seen that may be helpful to you.

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Macworld is coming up in a couple of days, and although I will be on a plane during the breathlessly awaited keynote, I still have some thoughts on what may be coming up… about 95% of people writing online have thoughts on it, too.

After last year’s fantasy-fulfilling iPhone announcement, expectations are high for this Macworld. It seems very unlikely that Apple will top that, but here’s what I think you may see.

We’ll see hardware refreshes. Now that Apple is using Intel chips, we know a lot more about the release schedule of the processors they’re using, since Intel publishes a processor roadmap and is very vocal about new chips. Intel is in the process of pushing out new CPUs, the “Penryn” line, mobile, desktop and server, and I think we’ll see some new Apple machines using them - specifically new MacBook Pros and likely MacBooks as well, and an iMac speed bump.

The iMacs just had a significant refresh last summer and I can’t see Apple doing any major changes to them beyond giving them new CPUs. The MacBook and MacBook Pro lines, however, haven’t had any significant changes in a while. In fact, Apple followed a very clever strategy when they switched to Intel chips - they didn’t make major changes to the appearance of the machines. An end-generation PowerPC iMac or PowerBook doesn’t look much different from a first generation Intel iMac or MacBook Pro. This was a great way to subtly tell people that they were still the same machines.

The MacBook Pro/Power Book has looked the same for a long time now, and while it’s still a great looking machine, I expect that Apple will update it to bring it more in line with the appearance of the new iMac.

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I recently picked up one of the new model Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro’s, and decided to try the new glossy screen. I was hesitant; I was worried about glare and whether it might make it more difficult to read the screen in bright light.

To the contrary, the glossy screen is fantastic. I find the display more readable than ever. I do see reflections in it at times, but my focus on the things on the display just tunes them out. The only downside is that it seems to pick up fingerprints more easily.

One of the dirty little secrets of Apple’s MacBook Pro was that there was no airplane power adapter available for it. In fact, since it draws 85 watts of power and most seats can only deliver 75 watts of power, so it was pretty much doomed from the start.
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If you buy your new Intel Macintosh from Apple and you get it with additional RAM pre-installed, you’ll be paying through the nose for the memory. If you’re comfortable adding memory to your Mac (and it’s really not difficult to; it’s the most common hardware operation that end-users perform, and Apple has made it pretty easy to deal with) then you can definitely save a decent amount of money on the RAM.

Increasing the total memory in your Macintosh is likely the cheapest way to improve its performance. MacOS X really wants at least 512MB to start with, and if you’re doing anything memory intensive, say Photoshop, you’ll be very very happy to max out your RAM. Also, if you’re on an Intel Mac and you’re running older, non-Intel applications that are built for a PowerPC, you’ll be using “Rosetta” without knowing it, and you’ll definitely need some extra RAM.
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Amazon continues to have the best retail prices for Macintoshes.

They’re offering a $100 rebate on the new MacBook. They also offer a $150 rebate on the MacBook Pro, a $100 rebate on the iMac and a $25 rebate on the Mac Mini.

The rebates are also very easy to claim… good going, Amazon! You can submit the rebate online without having to mail anything to them.

Checking the temperature of your computer CPU is one of those things that a lot of people seem to like to do, like be able to control iTunes from the status bar of their mail reader, or plugin an add-on to every other application in the world so that it can tell them what the weather is in its own distinctive way.

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Today Apple finally announced their iBook replacement - the new MacBook (non-pro), which replaces both the iBook line and the 12″ Powerbook. They come in black and white.

Don’t hold your breath for a 12″ MacBook Pro - the new MacBook does everything you’d expect from a 12″ MacBook Pro.

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There was some speculation when the MacBook Pro was announced that it might support IEEE 802.11a wireless networking in addition to the traditional 802.11b/g networking. 802.11a provides the same speeds as 802.11g, but in a different chunk of frequency spectrum. This is very helpful when you’re around other devices that may be trying to use the same frequencies as 802.11b/g (which is pretty common).

Since then, I haven’t seen any confirmation or denial of it working… so I tested it with an 802.11a access point I’m selling on eBay, and it does indeed work well. I wonder if Apple will update the Airport Express or Airport Extreme base stations to support 802.11a. I’m guessing not; I don’t really expect an update from them until they decide to support 802.11n. I wonder what they’ll call it… Airport Ultra?