SONY VAIO VGN-AR11B or Mac Book Pro with 15, 5

I need a new laptop and I simple cant deside between follow

SONY VAIO VGN-AR11B

Intel Core Duo T2300E / 1.66 GHz

X- Black 17" TFT aktiv matrix

Price in Sweden ca 1500 Euros

and

Mac Book Pro with 15, 5" monitor

Intel Core Duo 2.16 GHz

Price in Sweden ca 2400 Euros

I need it for my long travels abroad where it must replace my worktation

What i need to do is follow

Retuch and burn Photos!!! I use Capture one & Photoshop.

I am not shure if Mac Book Pro is worth the ca 1000 euros extra or it the Vaio will be enough for my job

I have work with both Mac & Windows so for me is not a problem att all the operativ systems

Any recomentations?

Lambis

The Merom chipsets are so close you can almost hear the wind rushing past your ears, so I suppose my first question would be "how soon do you need it". The Merom based laptop will probably represent a significant step up on the current Core Duo chipsets.

A 17" laptop can be a bit of a beast to carry long distances, but once you have it on site the larger monitor is definitely welcome if you're using multiple pallete applications like photoshop.

The macbook gives you the option of running Aperture, which is becoming more and more an integral part of my life, so I'd view that as an advantage for the macbook. Have you considered the 17" macbook?

The difference in speed between a 1.6 GHz Core Duo machine and a 2.1 GHz Core Duo machine is quite substantial, and may well warrant a large part of the "value differential" between the two machines.

IMHO of course

I believe the Merom (Core2Duo) is already available on Dell and IBM. The macs should be announcing their before Xmas.

Since you are using it for PS, you should look at the screen since software will perform about the same, given a similar setup. C1 3.7.x works a little faster on Windoze if I remember correctly. The screen is very important for PS work.