Yes. This (Penryn MacBook Pro) is absolutely the best developer computer available.
Amazon had the 2.5 GHz model (the one Apple was selling for $2500 a few months ago) for $1500, but it looks like that deal ended with December. Maybe it will come back.
You can still get the 2.4 GHz model (orig $2000) for $1400 from MacMall and maybe other places.
Agreed. Find a mac addict on craigslist who bought one right before the new ones came out. Spend 50 bucks at crucial to max out the memory to 4GB. Mmmm. Tasty memory.
Not a bad idea at all, finding one that is affordable is critical. Also, I don't even own a mac other than my powermac G4 and I still check (macrumors is it?) that one site that has a guesstimate on when new models are due to come out. That way if I buy a new one, I don't get screwed.
I bought mine new a while back (~$3000 AUD) from Apple. Just looking at eBay, they seem to go for a touch over $1000 USD at the moment. I figure they're a bit of a bargain at the moment since they're perfectly capable and have just been replaced by the shiny new model. I mainly develop Ruby Rails/Merb apps with TextMate.
Amazon had the 2.5 GHz model (the one Apple was selling for $2500 a few months ago) for $1500, but it looks like that deal ended with December. Maybe it will come back.
You can still get the 2.4 GHz model (orig $2000) for $1400 from MacMall and maybe other places.