Buying a Macbook Pro

Funkstard

Looks like I'll be turning to the dark side fairly soon. My 4 year old Inspiron 6400 has served me as a stalwart but it's showing its age now and I don't see it lasting another semester of intensive 3D use. So I'm going to get a 15" MBP. Are there any due product refreshments that I should hold out on, or should I fire away now?

Few other questions also with regards to the 15" product line.

2.4gGHz vs. 2.53GHz - much difference and is it worth the price?

7200rpm vs. 5400rpm - again, is there much of a difference in speed, and would I be better going for the 5400 for the less intensive battery use?

The intensive use it will be getting will be from Adobe programs and 3D rendering - some small amounts of video editing also.

Cheers.

grizzly

Have you considered getting the stock 2.4gGHz and saving the money for a SSD/extra RAM? I got this model 3 months ago and am going to get a SSD when the price drops/size increases. This should happen fairly rapidly over the next few years.

http://www.crucial.com/eu 8gb RAM €266.71 128gb SSD €274.94

cgarrad

Get a dell and buy a intel ssd and a nice holiday with the cash.

http://www.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.aspx/apple-comparison?c=us&l=en&cs=19

Funkstard

Wow...looking at a good 40% savings for a Dell with more power than its equivalent Mac. What about these hybrid hard drives I've heard about? Where you can dedicate certain programs to run off SSD?

cgarrad

Hybrid, half ssd, half hdd. Bit of a botch.

http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/09/seagate-momentus-xt-hybrid-hard-drive-review/

Just get a ssd with the cash you save and a cheap external drive for archive.

SSD are worth every penny ;-)

Funkstard

Can I ask what is so amazing about SSD? The speed and lack of heat that comes with them? If you had the choice of increasing RAM or buying a SSD instead, which would be more conducive to faster computing?

Sad Professor

Funkstard wrote: »

Are there any due product refreshments that I should hold out on, or should I fire away now?

Buy now. There won't be any updates to the MBP for a while.

Elessar

Funkstard wrote: »

Can I ask what is so amazing about SSD? The speed and lack of heat that comes with them? If you had the choice of increasing RAM or buying a SSD instead, which would be more conducive to faster computing?

An SSD is the best upgrade you could make to your computer. Blistering fast load and seek times compared to HDDs, programs load in an instant, there is no noise and heat is not an issue. Over everything else, if you wanted to upgrade a computer, get an SSD.

I have one in my Macbook Pro Corei5 2.4Ghz and it flies. The 2.4Ghz is the best bang for buck in the pro line. Don't even think about the 2.53Ghz version, the 130Mhz base increase is an absolute rip off for what they charge - and isn't more powerful than the 2.4 unless you count your miliseconds.

The i7 chip is still the same as an i5 just clocked higher and still isn't that much faster than the 2.4 - have a look at the anandtech review for comparisons. The 2.4 turbo boosts to 2.93Ghz anyway under load. For the amount of money you are paying, the 2.4 is the best value you can get. Install an SSD with the money you saved and watch it beat the i7 in almost every other area.

Doing 3D rendering and video editing, I can't stress enough, get an SSD. You won't believe the difference.

ician

I'm ordering a new MBP 15" in a few days also. I am unsure wether I should get upgrade to the Hi-Res glossy display or stick to the stock glossy display. I am not interested in the anti-glare option really. Has anybody experienced both, I had heard some people finding text too small etc., I'd rather hear it from people on here.

Rulmeq

cgarrad wrote: »

Get a dell and buy a intel ssd and a nice holiday with the cash.

http://www.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.aspx/apple-comparison?c=us&l=en&cs=19

Both those dells use shared graphics, which will cripple any photoshop/video work.