[FireBeyond]

"I have a friend with a base model rMBP who took it into the Apple Store, and they replaced his with the maxed out model because that's the only configuration they had left in stock."

That surprised me - I was looking at an MBP purchase at an Apple Store (fairly large one, Tacoma WA).

My options were only 4GB and various sizes of HDDs.

They "did not" stock 8GB models, or SSD models. Not "were out of", but did not.

They offered to install more memory, but at the (already extortionate Apple price) cost of the full 8GB (and give me 4GB back).

I ended up buying a Vaio Z, and have been fantastically happy with it: Carbon Fiber body, 13" 2.5lb, with a better processor (Core i7 3612), better screen (1920x1080), better graphics, and 8GB of memory. Oh, and it was cheaper.

[jad]

> They "did not" stock 8GB models, or SSD models. Not "were out of", but did not.

This is a Retina MacBook Pro, not the "traditional" MacBook Pros with the optical drive. All Retina MacBook Pros have SSDs, so I'm not sure what models you were looking at. In any event, Apple does carry the fully maxed out Retina MacBook Pro in the stores. I know because I bought one myself.

[FireBeyond]

This was approximately two months prior to the rMBP release.

I have no doubt that varying stores have different stock policies, but at the fairly large store I was at, it was suggested I order online.

[tikhonj]

I'm curious: do you use Linux on your Z-series? If so, how is it? Can you get the power dock thing to work?

[FireBeyond]

Linux itself works fine - I installed Ubuntu 12.04 for a while, but am now back with Windows 8. To be honest, I never tried the power dock - at home I use my desktop, and only use my laptop away from the desk.