The good news: The CPUs were just upgraded to 1.83 and 2.0 GHz (from 1.67 and 1.83 GHz).

The bad news: This will likely delay existing ship dates by up to two weeks.

The interesting option: For an additional $300, the processor can be further upgraded to 2.16 GHz.

I just got off the phone with the Apple Store and was told that there would be a 2-3 week delay in shipping the 2.16GHz MacBooks. I was also told that my ship date was pushed back to Feb 28 on the existing order. So I sprung for the upgrade. Hopefully my math is right and the extra shipping on the faster CPU doesn’t stack with my existing delay. Final Cut Pro won’t work until sometime in March anyway, so it’s not a huge crisis for me to wait. Now I can take a few weeks off from checking Apple’s order status page three times a day.

The new computer I don’t even have yet is almost 20% faster than when I bought it. Not too shabby.