Replacing Macs

mjbushnell said:

I've got 2 older Macs, a 2007 MacPro desktop & a 2008 MacBook Pro.
It's come time to replace them, especially since the MacPro will not run the latest OS X (it's topped out at 10.7.5) & its 1tb hard drive is almost maxed out. I'm wondering if it is worth it to get a larger hard drive for it.

I've found that the 15" MacBook Pro is too large & heavy to cart around on a regular basis (especially after working with an iPad I for the last few years & recently upgrading that to an iPad Air).

I'm trying to decide which route to go. I'm going to a railroad historical convention at the end of July (Union Pacific Railroad Historical Society in Ogden, UT) & if I go the 13" Macbook Pro route, I would like to get one prior to that trip. In addition to the convention, I plan on taking an additional week off & do some exploring around UT & ID, looking for a possible retirement location when that time comes in 2 1/2 - 3 years (hopefully).

The other option is to get a new MacPro. As they have just come out after an extensive update, I am hesitant to get one right away (I'd rather wait for an upgrade or two). And they are expensive!

As far as uses for a new computer, other than general use, I do quite a bit of photography, using Adobe Photoshop CS6 (I am hesitant to make the jump to Creative Cloud). Most of my digital images are shot with a Nikon D700, shot in raw format. I also use a Canon Powershot SD900 Point & Shoot for JPEG images when the Nikon is too big & cumbersome. Other images are 35mm slides that are scanned in using a Nikon Super Coolscan 5000 or 2 1/4 square B&W negatives scanned in using an Epson Perfection 2450 Photo Scanners.

Thanks for any ideas.
Mark

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glenthompson said:

If you go with just a laptop, disk space will be a significant problem if you want to have most of your files with you. If you're ok with using external drives then a high end 13" MBP will work ok and be very portable. My older MBP with an external monitor does a decent job as a desktop. I personally hate dealing with two personal machines and syncing files between them. I prefer to find one device that can do the job.

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mjbushnell said:

Thanks for the replies guys.

My guess is that for the time being, I would go with a 13" MacBook Pro. I will probably get some kind of external drive, at least for use while at home. At that point, I will have to figure out where & which files I want to keep on the internal drive (& including what size internal drive to get) and which files to keep on the external drive.

Thanks again.

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h9826790 said:

Just for your info, you can install Mavericks on a 2007 Mac Pro.

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