Safe yet to buy MacBook Pro?

Question

I've been reading the various threads about the battery, whine and other problems and am wondering if it is safe yet to buy a MacBook Pro.I could probably hold off for another month but at that point will have to decide whether to buy a MBP or find a used G4.
Are the MBPs built more recently REALLY having fewer problems, than say the weeks 8-12 machines, or are the newer machines too new to have manifested the problems? Latter hard to answer I know but I'm looking for input.
Thanx.
Ti Powerbook   Mac OS X (10.4.6)  
Ti Powerbook   Mac OS X (10.4.6)  

Answer 1

Kestrel,
I think it is safe to ignore what you read on these forums. I just received my 17" MBP, and it is flawless.
There is no "whine." Period. This MPB is a replacement for my final revision 17" Powerbook, and there is no discernable difference between the two, either in the sounds that it produces or the heat it generates. This last, in spite of the fact that the MBP lacks the rather large air "intakes" on the side that the Powerbook had. This leads me to believe that the CoreDuo requires less cooling than did the later G4s, and it follows that whatever temps these things achieve is normal and has been predicted.
I will say this: At one point, I took my Powerbook in to an Apple store to compare the display against a MBP. While there, I transferred one of my Desktop pictures over to the MBP via Bluetooth. I then compared the two displays, side by side, with the same pic set as the Desktop background. I really could only detect a marginal difference.
After having spent a day with the two machines at home, side by side as I migrated myself over, I have to say that the difference is, in fact, stunning! It's not so noticeable when one looks briefly at the two machines. Rather, it is revealed when I use the MBP for a while, then look over at the Powerbook. The Powerbook looks dim and washed out after getting used to the MBP. Dingy, in fact. Besides the speed, this is the one thing that stands out the most to me.
My Powerbook came to me in flawless condition. It has had quite a bit of use since I bought it (it survived a 10-week tour of the US with an opera company), but it is still in perfect condition. I neither expected, nor did I experience, any problems with it. The MBP has come to me in the same perfect condition, inside and out. I do not expect any more problems with it than I experienced with my Powerbook.
I do have to admit that most applications that must be run in Rosetta suffer for it. Anything that is Intel-native (Universal) simply screams (of course), but I have found that most PPC apps are discernably slower in Rosetta on the MBP than they were natively on the Powerbook. Mostly, this is detectable at launch; once an app is up and running it seems to respond well enough. Games suffer a great deal, though (Zero Hour is almost painful, compared to the Powerbook).
Rosetta does work, however. I have even managed, quite easily, to get Flip4Mac installed and working. When I want to watch video from the CNN website in Safari, for example, all I need do is launch Safari in Rosetta; the rest takes care of itself, and it is only slightly slower. The same holds true for viewing Windows Media files in Quicktime.
In short, I think the answer to your question is "Don't be silly, of course it's safe."
Scott