Apple economics: a free laptop every year.

It's because a Macbook is a Macbook whether its 2005 of 2011, but some HP-24x454 vs a MX311 is meaningless. That's why Motorola/Samsung are making their Droid/Galaxy lines.

Could be interesting if: - you don't need a custom built laptop (ex: max out ram, replace the optical bay by a 2nd laptop, non US or non local keyboard) - your time is cheap or you could not afford your laptop otherwise, because time is money even even if it take hours to set up, add that the time to make the transaction, sell, buy a new one, spend time without a laptop etc. - you make sure you keep the laptop in a pristine state to maximize resell value - ie no tagging or engraving, which could be useful theft deterrent (I have a huge laser-engraved domain name on mine - bigger than the apple logo, because I care more about the data than the potential resale value)

Could be good for students. Not sure about anyone else. And it reeks of a parasitic mindset (suggestion to ask a student to do the purchase to take advantage of their discount or import a US laptop without paying duties/sales tax)

Funny story- I was on vacation and I had a software problem that caused custom made software crash. An urgent need for a big client made a trip to the applestore to buy a new laptop the most logical move- it was already installed. It took an hour for the purchase (trip included), 20 minutes to install the software, do what was required and provide the results. The client got its result 1 hour + 20 minutes after its call.

And that paid for this laptop and a good leftover, not including the great experience for the client who knows that wherever you are, you will deliver on time.

If you're a responsible programmer, you should be doing the first thing on the list regularly anyway, so that shouldn't be much of a problem.

I'd like to offer a counterpoint to the author's suggestion that "you'd be an idiot not to buy [and dispose of] a new laptop every year." I'm a software engineer and put a lot on my computer's shoulders, running an entire cluster's worth of software as part of my development environment.

I value longevity and durability in products I buy. It's nice to pick a machine and stick with it. It's a long-term companion. It's about slowing "disposable computing's" cycle of production and obsolescence. It feels good to prove that, with a few upgrades over its lifetime, a well-engineered product can be useful -- even as a primary computer -- for years to come.

My Spring 2008 MacBook Pro (http://cl.ly/2H1l2X1Q2w181Z2P1Y3P) will be three years old this Saturday, and I couldn't be happier with it. My previous machine was a 15" PowerBook G4 purchased in 2004. Both have been fantastic primary computers. An occasional upgrade and maintenance can make all the difference in extending the useful lifespan of a machine.

A few months in, I maxed out the memory to 4GB, which is still sufficient despite running our entire stack and an IDE or VM. Last summer, I replaced the 7200RPM drive with a 160GB X25-M. A few months ago, I added a second 48GB SSD drive via the ExpressCard slot to regain a bit of the storage sacrificed by choosing a faster drive. Over the three-year lifetime of the machine (so far), these upgrades cost about $625.

During that time, the manufacturer has also done a great job standing behind the laptop, replacing the keyboard/top case, one battery, and one power adapter. I'll take it in for one last servicing before the warranty runs out (to fix an unreliable Caps Lock key and clean the DVD-RW drive I never use), and may purchase one more battery at some point. Aside from this, it's in perfect condition and plenty fast enough for Java/Scala/Python/Ruby/Android development and testing.

This computer's followed me from the week I graduated college as an aspiring freelancer through three years of building a career in software engineering. It's got some life in it yet.

Destroying your files is a single step, well-implemented in Mac OS, and you don't even have to do this if you simply install a fresh OS and use the right settings.

Selling your old laptop is easy via Craigslist.

Copying files takes a few minutes with FireWire disk mode.

There is no separate step for "personal settings"; those are copied over when you copy your home directory over.

There is also almost never a new keyboard layout.

There is almost never a major hardware issue, either.