Buying a 17" 2010 Macbook Pro now?

If it does what you need it to, and if the price is reasonable relative to similar machines, why not?

Liquinn said:

Is it a good price?

Just seems quite a lot of money for a two year old machine.

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Not sure how close this is to breaking marketplace rules, but with regards to that price in the US (~$1700), I think that is egregiously overpriced.

OP, I wouldn't buy that. The 2010 MBPs only had dual-core processors, so you're not really getting a better i5 than what you would, with say, a brand-new Ivybridge model.

You can get a brand-new 13" MBP for the same price, and it'll arguably have better performance in every way (except perhaps the GPU, but I'm not sure how the HD 4000 stacks up against the old nVidia card). Plus the newer ones can support up to 16GB RAM (2x 8GB), whereas I believe that model of i5 in the 17" can only support up to 8GB.

I appreciate you may well need size for the screen, but if you're willing to overlook that as a factor, you can get the new USB 3 13" MBAs or MBPs brand-new for the same price, with a one-year warranty, of course (and if you're a student, get a neat 20% off the price, with AppleCare included!)

MBA will have much quicker performance due to the SSD being built-in, but the MBPs can be upgradable with their RAM & HDDs, if you're comfortable doing that.

It just seems like a heck of a price to pay for what essentially would just be a bigger screen -- as aforementioned, you can get a brand-new Mac with better specs for the same price; and that includes warranty.

If you're going to sink a grand on a laptop, make sure it's a future-proof one!

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And yeah, as Gizmo22 pointed out:

That deal's a complete rip-off. I wouldn't pay more than £700 for it, maybe £800 at a heck of a push, but you'd have to flutter your eyelashes and perhaps throw in a backrub.

Oh, and just went on videobenchmark.net to check out the GPU performance of that vs the new base model MBPs.

Graphics cards are almost identical, but the HD 4000 (in the newer Macs) actually has better performance than the GT 330M (and the 330M is the dedicated card!)

I beg of you; don't get it!

OP, no one but yourself knows your actual needs, nor can we decide for you. Thinking out loud with you, the following comes up:

Seeing the s in your signature, you surely realize that this machine is slower, and you will not be able to connect to your Thunderbolt display.

I love the 17" screen estate, but I advise you to either get a refurbished end of the line 17" from October 2011 which, in the UK, will cost you close to twice as much compared to the amount you are considering to spend now or, if you must have another laptop immediately, go for something like this, just slightly more expensive, but much more up to date.

In short, if you want to go 17", get the last model.

AppleStrudel

I tend to agree with the others who think the price is high - I just don't know the market in the UK at all.

In the US, I'd pay no more than $1000 for it - the base 13" is (considerably) faster.

Good luck!