Ramblings

Warning - extreme nerdism ahead.

So I'm in the market for a new laptop soon. I've mentioned this before. I want to spend around $1500, but honestly I'm pretty flexible on price. For the most part, I've boiled it down to 3 choices - Dell Studio XPS 13, Macbook Pro 13", or wait a bit longer for the mobile Nehalem chips to start shipping in new laptops.

The two laptops I'm considering now have really similar hardware - probable identical CPUs (P9500) and GPUs (NVidia 9400M), and what I think are Samsung-controlled SSDs. Anyway, I configured both to be 4GB RAM with the 256GB SSDs - I would have done this comparison with the 128GB SSDs but Dell's out of stock of those as of right now. Both are retail prices with my federal employee discount.

	Mac	Dell	Notes
Price	$2,161.00	$1,759	$400 price difference, before any coupons I might find from Slickdeals/Fatwallet.
Battery Life	7 hours	4 hours	This is just a guesstimate based on reviews and how I personally use my laptop. And it looks like I'd literally have to buy a spare battery for the Dell to compare. I cringe at the extra hassle that a sealed battery would bring though. Will it last 4 years or will I have to take it to some Apple Store hundreds of miles from where I live?
Touchpad	Multitouch with one button	Ordinary with 2 buttons	I turn off tap-to-click since I don't like to accidentally click on stuff. Also, I very frequently use the right click and the simulated middle click (both buttons together) in ordinary use. I also don't know what gestures are available for the multitouch (scroll, I assume at a minimum), and whether they're enough to make up for the LACK OF RIGHT MOUSE BUTTON.
OS	OS X	Ubuntu	90% of my time on my computer is spent using software available on both platforms - websites, music, movies, email, chat. I wonder how easy it is to tinker in OS X though. How much effort is it to get a web server with database up and running? Is the user experience as configurable as conky, compiz, and Cairo-dock? Will I have to spend time chasing down video/audio codecs, or is it as easy as Medibuntu? I may have to sit down with a Mac for a few hours figuring this stuff out.

I'm guessing this will mostly have to wait until I get back to the U.S. when I can really work out the details of my preferences. One thing that really bugs me about Apple though is their lack of transparency. I'm not 100% sure that the processor in the MBP is a P9500, because Apple doesn't find it necessary to post that information. What about the 2.4GHz CPU? What model is that? Can I change out a hard drive without voiding the warranty? $2160 is a bit much to spend before finding out these things.

Maybe I'll try to get a bootleg OS X installed on my current computer to figure these things out.