I am considering upgrading to a relatively recent MacBook Pro for
reasons of speed....

If I buy a new model, I have to also buy an adaptor for my monitor
and Firewire 400 I believe. And, ridicoulously in my view, pay extra
for a matte screen. (Also, the laptop will cost twice as much; the 17
inchers, in particular, seem to be premium priced).

Accordingly, I would like to know how much difference there is in
speed between the more recent Unibodies and the older Macbook Pros?
For example, reading about the new solid-state drives, I see there is
only a small speed bump - a few seconds.

InDesign still runs OK, but Bridge and Lightroom and Photoshop are
slower than I would like. (Bridge seems particularly, and often
intolerably, slow; I'm on a 1.67 Ghz Powerbook 17 inch with 2 gigs of
RAM).

How much noticeable difference is there between different generations
of MacBook Pros? How important is the speed of the hard drive? (These
two questions are, of course, how it operates with InDesign). Have
all the CS4 and Snow Leopard/Intel compatability problems be solved?

Also, does freeing up more hard drive space increase performance?

Has anyone used this transparency and film scanner:
http://www.photo-i.co.uk/Reviews/interactive/Epson%20V700/page_1.htm

Thank you.

Finally:

Also, I thought some people might have missed this obituary:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/arts/design/24noorda.html

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