Can I handle a week without my laptop? We’ll find out! #iPadWeek

Over the weekend, I dropped my MacBook Pro off at the Apple store. It’s almost three years old and is starting to show it. It doesn’t always turn on when I ask it to, and other times it locks up when running graphic intensive applications. On top of that the battery doesn’t always charge, it barely holds a charge… You get the idea.

Today I found out that my MacBook is so troubled, Apple couldn’t fix it in house! They had to send it to a mysterious place called “the Depot,” where it will spend the next 5-7 business days in the loving hands of Apple’s top technicians. At least, that’s how I like to think of it. Maybe they’ll just throw the outdated piece of tech in the trash, though. (I’m only kidding! I love you MacBook! Come home safe, baby!)

Either way, this week I’m going to be doing a lot of work from my new office setup. Check it out:

Yup, that’s my iPad paired with a Bluetooth keyboard. Pretty bare-bones if you ask me. The real question now is: Will I survive? Will I lose emails and be unable to locate files? I’m only in the testing period with this setup, so you’ll have to check in this week as I share my tips, tricks, and frustrations trying to really work on my (second favorite) Apple device.

Update: I’m now 24-hours into this experiment. Read the next post in this series to find out the early problems I ran into!

Been waiting to buy a new MacBook Pro? Today Could Be Your Day – Upgrades Across the Line

While no major changes have been made to Apple’s professional line of laptops, the MacBook Pro, Apple quietly upgraded the entire line of products today to introduce some small changes—bigger hard drives, faster processors and some better graphics cards. Minimum hard drive sizes are now 500 GB across the line, and processor speeds have been bumped up: you now get a 2.4GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 on the lowest-end 13″ model at $1,199, and 2.8GHz i7 on the upgraded model at $1,499. Graphics on the high-end 15″ and 17″ models have been bumped up from the AMD Radeon HD 6750M to the newer HD 6770M model, which should provide a nice boost to anyone doing heavy graphics and video work, or even those just looking to eke out a few more FPS in their favorite games.

As Apple’s laptop upgrade schedule is never a public matter, you never know when the laptop you just bought is going to become last year’s model. Which is why if you’ve been interested in a new Mac, now is the best time to buy a new MacBook Pro.