Go Macbook Halfway or Macbook Pro all the way

[Jester]

A bit of back ground. I bought an iBook G4 2 years back. My wife started school a year ago and I told her she could use the iBook, as it was our only laptop. She had the iBook in her back pack and not being the tech conciencious person that she is she banged her back pack around alot. Thus the demise of the iBook.

2 week later I bought her her own macbook, and I was without. I was fine because I could do all my school work on my desktop no problem. Then I got orders to go to a survey class and I had to have laptop for school reasons. I made the stupid mistake of buying a toshiba satellite. Not a bad laptop, but I had techno lust for OS X, bootcamp, and the macbook.

Fast foward to now. I was planning on "building in august" in my sig. I was going to build it and then get a black macbook after selling the toshiba off.

Now to the dilema. The new Macbook Pro's came out with the exact same basic specs (processor, video card, ram) that I was going to put into the desktop. The Macbook Pro can be upgraded to 4GB of ram as well. Obviously with boot camp the whole "well you can't use this program on a mac" argument is out the window.

I would like advice on whether or not to get the Desktop, and Macbook or go with just the Macbook Pro.

A little back ground on my computer usage.

I am a moderate gamer, but my gaming days are on the decline due to the increase in a social life, and new intrest in fitness.

I am a Geographical Information System Tech in the AF. I work alot with CADD, and ArcGIS Desktop. I will also be an instructor at the Enlisted Engineering school for DOD.

I LOVE music.

I like to dabble in photoshop, and other design type products.

With everything I have listed there the MBP really sounds like a solid Idea, but I thought that I would use you all as a sounding board first before making the 2.5k leap. Thanks.

[tigstah]

i would stick with the mac book pro with the dock.
are there any cadd programs avail for os X? if so, thats what i would do....
Edit: i googled what bootcamp was.
get yourself that mac, you'll have the best of both worlds.......

[novie]

i have a MBP and use boot camp, but keep a windows desktop as well. for example, you may find that you dont want to be using CADD software in boot camp, which does have a few issues and limitations, and at the least completely strips the mac of its 'rightoutofthebox' type of usefulness. personally i dont use boot camp for things that are critical to me unless i have to. not having a right mouse button is an annoyance in windows on the mac, some keys need to be remapped, the backlight auto adjustments and fans may not kick in like they should, etc. check onmac.net for some clarifications.

[thefultonhow]

Keep in mind that the only kind of docking station you'd be able to use on a MacBook Pro (or most PC laptops, for that matter) is a USB docking station, because it does not have a docking port. That means things like hardware-accelerated DVI, gigabit LAN, etc. would not transfer over.