sooner or later? help\advice needed

Hi folks, this looks like a really helpful forum Can anyone advise me? Basically I moved from desktop to laptops a few years ago, and I am at the stage where I really can't handle using Windows any longer. I'm a student just about to start on Monday for an Msc, and as luck would have it, my latest vista laptop, which is about 4 months old has basically today decided to bork on me architecturally(the whole o\s is a mess) and physically (one of the important keys has just decided to stop working). I'm going to send it back and no doubt it will be 'repaired', but I really need a new laptop ASAP!
I realise Leopard is going to be released in a cpl of weeks, and I was planning on getting a macbook anyway, but in my desperate position, I really need a laptop for beginning term on Monday. I have the money saved, is it worth me just picking up my macbook tomorrow with tiger and installing Leopard when it is released? or would it make more sense for me to bite my nails and wait?
Thing is, I really feel that I must have use of a computer asap!
Help!

There's nothing wrong with Tiger, it is fully featured and comparable, if not superior, to most other operating systems. In my opinion, Leopard is just a bit of icing on the cake. In fact, many of the new features in Leopard can be grafted onto Tiger with aftermarket products.

So... if you really need a new notebook, buy it now. Chances are, with Leopard just a couple of weeks out, you'll probably get a free upgrade anyway.

Welcome to Mac-Forums, shawny and to the Mac.

As cwa noted, Tiger is good as is. My thoughts are that I won't upgrade to Leopard myself before Apple comes out with the second update to tweak Leopard (which will probably mean in about six months from now): each OS needs to be refined no matter how long it was tested before its release.

And when Leopard is ripe for my needs, it will only be $129 (cheaper for the Edu version).