Firstly the trackpad. What a revelation, way more comfortable than a mouse, and with all the gestures of the trackpad on my MacbookPro. Fantastic.

Now, the iPad. I bought it mainly for books, photos and web/mail without the need to get my big 17″ MBP out. Already added 28Gb (pre processing) of images. They look awesome.

Some of my iPhone games like angry bird are just as much fun.

Only time will tell to see just how much i use it for other things like video/iplayer et al.

Right, for the past few weeks I have been trying to get my hands on a 17″ MBP. Not the standard retail model, I want the smaller but faster disk, more RAM, and a few other tweaks.

In the UK (apple.com/uk) retail price for this unit is about £2,200. However in the US the same spec will typically retail for about $2,150. That is near as damn it half the price of the UK model. Now I know that the UK (and EU) has steep import taxes for goods, but this does not justify the 100% difference in price.

So, Apple. Why oh why, are you so expensive over here? I mean your pricing is so exhorbantly high that drive people to look for alternate methods of getting their grubby little mits on the toy that they want.

The price for me is so vast, I could probably take a week long trip to the US, buy it locally there, and bring it back with me. With enough change for a cup of tea at LHR.

Does anyone have any ideas? The wife is struggling to see how a £2k+ laptop is value for money, unless it can clean the house, and cook.

This is by no means the only tale of Apple hiking up prices as soon as their products hit the shelves ok UK resellers. In fact Apple are not the only US brand to do this. Levi jeans are another good example. But these are not just 100% more expensive, during my last visit stateside they were near enough 350% more expensive.

It’s things like these that make you wonder if your future lies in the Country in which you were born. Don’t even get me started on the state of the UK political climate, it is worse than feeding time at the Zoo of late.