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Comment by danpalmer | Hacker News Reader

I'm glad someone is being a bit more positive about this. I was a little disappointed at first, but all of the compromises on this machine are fully explained by lead time, battery life and pushing industry standards forward. The first I can't control, the second I don't want to sacrifice, and the third I'm fully in support of.

The only real issue for me with this laptop is the price increases in the UK. We're paying about $500 more at current conversion rates than the US price.

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You're a little off with the UK prices.

The US price, pre-tax, for the base 15" model is $2399. At whatever Google thinks is the current exchange rate, that's £1948.43 GBP. Add 20% VAT and it's on the shelf at £2338.12.

The UK price for this model is £10.88 more than the direct exchange rate.

You are correct, I was not accounting for VAT, I guess as the US price does _not_ include sales tax. Thanks!

They almost never do - US sales taxes vary by state, often city, and sometimes county. The combination of these is basically a list of tax by zipcode, so publishing them has more in common with calculating shipping than it does for us.

I know it doesn't really help (I'm facing the same problem @ 21%!), but the current conversion is a lot fairer than they've been in the past.

The fourth reason for compromise is their continued insistence on 'adding thinness', which apparently resulted in a significant reduction in battery capacity and hence forced the compromise on RAM type.

I've yet to meet a 'pro' who would consider reducing a laptop battery from 10397 mAh to 7600 to be sane, let alone considering any compromises that follow.

Please understand that there are very different types of 'pros'. Some "pros" need to be on the road continuously and portability is a huge advantage for which the performance hit is acceptable. For others, they only to unplug to go for meetings and rather have something more powerful and heavy/big.

Apple's trying to limit it's currency downside risk. Clearly they think the pound has further to slide.

Don't forget that the UK prices also include 20% VAT, the US prices don't.

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