I’ll switch to a notebook when Apple stops making desktops, not a minute sooner.

Unlike Gene I don’t need 8 cores of processing goodness and a graphics card that needs auxiliary power, but if I was to buy such a beast today it would last longer than a comparably priced MBP. Faster computers simply last longer.

The big question, however, is how much longer. Right now the difference isn’t huge, but that’s because hardware has been gaining cores faster than the software can use them.

That’s going to change, big time, in the next two years. Snow Leopard is just the first of many moves to make software more capable of parallel processing. The gap between dual core and quad/octo core machines is about to get huge and I don’t want to be on the wrong side.

Right now I’m weighing the cost of a refurbished dual core iMac that I expect to abandon within two years against a Mac Pro that will cost me twice as much, but last twice as long. Either way I’m waiting for Snow Leopard to ship before I pull the trigger.

When time is money, it is hard to see notebooks taking over the desktop. Due to its form factor heat and power consumption are the two main issues that when subsituting a MacBook Pro for an iMac, it is a compromise. The same with netbooks for notebooks.

There was a Power PC G5 processor in an iMac but a PowerBook version never appeared. On my MacBook I inadvertently performed an “empty trash” with secure delete on a large file (+300 MB). I heard the fan running at full blast and felt the heat for a very long time. I will never repeat this mistake.

In a Cnet article, an Intel marketing person mentioned that in the June through August period of last year, the return rate of netbooks were high. A couple of resellers experienced a rate of 30%. This was because of the netbook was not marketed clearly as a compromised notebook.

The one thing that keeps me using a Mac Pro is the ability to have multiple internal hard disks. If I bought a laptop as my primary computer (I have an Air which is a secondary computer already), or if I bought an iMac, I wouldn’t be able to use those disks. As yet, there are no external enclosures that are affordable and that can hold 4 disks. (I already have other externals for backups, but each one is a single disk and enclosure.)