Macbook Pro for college

Mister Man

Hi guys,

I'm going to be studying Industrial Design in IT Carlow.

I was looking at getting a laptop (As I sold of my last one, and currently only have a desktop)

I've a few questions:

1. Would a 13inch Macbook Pro i5 be a good choice in terms of being portable but still powerful enough for my needs?
2. Is it worth paying the 1,200 or so for the MBP or would I be better off with a PC laptop?
3. How long does the battery actually last (General tasks, wifi and internet exploring) as I never really trust the times given by companies.

Personally, I want a MacBook Pro for college. I'm just not 100% sure if it will be powerful enough for me. I will be using a lot of Photoshop/Illustrator/InDesign when not in college, but away from home, and I believe 3D Design programs are used for the course?

Cheers

Sad Professor

Mister Man wrote: »

1. Would a 13inch Macbook Pro i5 be a good choice in terms of being portable but still powerful enough for my needs?

I don't have any experience with the new i5 MBPs. The graphics card and screen size might be an issue if you are doing graphic design, but going larger would obviously mean sacrificing portability. I'd imagine it would be fine though.

2. Is it worth paying the 1,200 or so for the MBP or would I be better off with a PC laptop?

Ah, the dreaded "Are Macs worth it?" question. Why, yes of course they are, but this is the Mac forum.

3. How long does the battery actually last (General tasks, wifi and internet exploring) as I never really trust the times given by companies.

Apple's current figures are fairly accurate. Turn off wireless, turn down the brightness, etc, and you will actually get longer out of it. The battery life on Macbooks are excellent, far superior to any PC notebook.

miralize

3DS Max is not available for OS X you'll either have to install windows via Bootcamp or Virtualization software. Cinema 4D is if I remember correctly

Oafley Jones

Would you consider the Air? Very fast, far more backpack friendly and actually has a screen that's reflective of the price tag (unlike the MBP).

Dublinstiofán

If your going to have to work on this machine for the whole day most days, unless your eyesight is extraordinary i'd buy a 15" screen MINIMUM. 13" and 11" screens are a waste of time for work!

You'll be heading off home with a cluster headache everyday otherwise!

Make sure you get your student discount of 10% too!

Mister Man

@Sad Professor - The screen size wouldn't be a huge issue for me. The screen is the same res as my second monitor, so it would be fine.
Would the graphics chip be a problem? I've using CS5 suite with some lower spec machines, and it didn't seem to be ALL bad?

@miralize - I would probably have Windows running on boot camp for some programs, but If I can get away with it, I'll be using Cinema 4D R11.5 OR R12 as I currently use that on my PC (And yes there is a Mac version)

@Oafley Jones - The MacBook Air is something I've also been considering. But I dismissed the Air, as I didn't think it had any perks over the Pro apart from being tiny. All MBP, to me, didn't seem to bad in terms of weight and size. (This could be because my last laptop was a 20inch acer to weighed more then my desktop tower does lol)

conor.hogan.2

If you can afford it pay for the 15", I have become trigger happy with the cmd+ on my 13" MBP because the text can be sometimes strenuous to read at the small size (especially while looking at the screen for 12 hours a day)

CS5 runs fine on my 2010 MBP 13" (actually I ran it on my old macbook possibly) and virtualbox is perfect for running windows (or you can pay for paralells or vmware depending on your needs)

Sad Professor

The 13 inch screen is plenty IMO. I wouldn't want to be dragging a 15 inch into college every day.

dre_jspeed

I have 13"MBP 2010 and have been running AutoCAD, CS5 and C4D on it without any problem. The battery figures apple publish are pretty much on the money, only thing is when rendering C4D can eat up the power has you can imagine. Also I find we I'm watching Youtube can be heavy on the battery.

GUIGuy

As an ID graduate I can tell you it's the software that really counts. While there is plenty of graphics software on the mac, you'll probably still need bootcamp. 3dsMax is the standard for modelling rendering and it won't be available on OSX any time soon. There is a new version of AutoCAD for OSX. It's perfectly file compatible but not as feature complete as the Windows version. I like it but it's quite a bit different to the Windows version, and more than likely any classes you get will be in the Windows version. I'd stay away from C4D because its 2d spline drawing is really poor and its AutoCAD import will never be as up to date as 3dsMax. Maya is available on the Mac so if prefer to stay in OSX you probably can interoperate between it and the OSX version of AutoCAD.

As for hardware? Anything you buy today is a bargain & a supercomputer compared to what I had! In 1995 when I bought a pentium 133Mhz with 16MB of RAM 4MB graphics, 1GB HD and a 17" monitor. Cost £2700. Inflation adjusted cost? €7500!

The only time any machine is going to be seriously taxed is during rendering... and rendering can still bring any machine to its knees.

If I were in your position I'd get the 13" MacBook Air. I have an 11" and while it's great for portability I only surf and do text processing tasks on it... the 13" has a higher pixel resolution so it's more practical.

While they are slow in rendering they are plenty fast enough for photoshop type tasks.

opinion guy

Hmm whilst I take SadProf's point on the weight issue, I'm inclined to think if you are doing graphic design/CAD type stuff get the 15". I say this for 3 reasons:

1. Ermmmm its just bigger
2. You also have higher resolution display and dedicated GPU. The cief problem with the 13" is that you can't display in particularly high resolution more so than the actual size of it being small.
3. You have more options regarding type of screen coating - glossy, non-glossy etc.

miralize

You can also get a high res screen in the 15" which will bump it up to 1680x1050, perfect for design work, where screen real estate is important

Mister Man

Thanks for all the advice guys!

I don't think my budget will get me to a 15inch Macbook pro.
Although I'm sure the Dedicated GPU in the 15 & 17 inch MBP's would help some what, I just don't want to be dragging something big around with me everyday into college.

@GUIGuy - Thanks for the advice, I am also open to maybe a powerful Laptop (Just not one of them stupid Alienware/XPS laptops) and maybe a netbook for taking notes in class? If I was to get the MBP, I'd defo have Windows 7 running on boot camp (Or Vmachine) as I haven't used a Mac since my Powerbook, and that was only surfing the net. I wouldn't mind learning everything through the Windows version (Software) as my home PC is a decent spec machine that runs Windows. I'll defo consider the 13inch MBA though. The render times aren't a big deal for me, I remember rendering something on a Pentium Dual Core 1.6GHz not too long ago. :O

@Opinion Guy - I'll be going with a Glossy screen no matter what. (It's personal choice if anyone is wondering) but again, not sure the budget will get me the MBP 15inch

@miralize - Although the 1680x1050 res would be great to work on, I wouldn't mind the lower res, as I've used the same res in the past for designing. My *MAIN* design work will probably still be done at home on my main PC. The MBP would just be something to use if I'm away fro home for a while and want to get some work done on the go.