Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

13" Future proof?

B

BBQ BOY

macrumors regular
Original poster
Feb 23, 2010
158
0
Hey guys and gals. I am wanting to get a portable MacBook Pro. Uses will be for taking in the car to work and working on it doing some doucuments(but not many at all), web browsing, sofa web browsing for the wife and emails. Could do some photo/video downloading from cameras if on vacation with the family and emails.
No gaming and no hard core graphics. I have a iMac at home.
Anyway I was speaking witrh a friend of mine yesterday and in his opinion the 13" C2D is not going to be future proof enough as software/hardware conitues to beefed up.
My main reason for the 13" is poratabiity but not as much as price is a factor.
Iv'e read the 13" vs. 15" debate 100 times but I am no better off on that decision.
 
The C2D one is fine. Many people on here as well as myself are still using C2D Macbooks and Macbook Pros. They last a long time and will probably work up to Mac OS 10.9.
 
Core 2 Duo is in the coffin in all cases except for Celeron and Pentium Dual Core. Intel will take care of that with Sandy Bridge in Q1 2011.
 
Eidorian said:
Core 2 Duo is in the coffin in all cases except for Celeron and Pentium Dual Core. Intel will take care of that with Sandy Bridge in Q1 2011.
Click to expand...

re-word that as if I am a 3rd grader.What is sandy bridge?
 
No, it'll still be the same. But Sandy Bridge will be faster and more efficient. Think i7 but better. Currently C2D is the "cheaper" of the two Intel CPUs. With the i3, i5, and i7 being the "expensive" one. With Sandy Bridge, the C2D will be "outdated" and the iX ones will become the "cheaper" CPUs.
 
It's not future proof per se, because no computer is. But in general, the C2D is fine for probably 90% or more of people and their use of a computer. Unless you are doing some heavy duty stuff on you computer (which it doesn't sound like you are), go for the 13" if that is what you like. The processor is by no means the bottleneck in any computer, and many people are still using older tech than the C2D line. But in all likelihood, it will support future releases of OS X and other software for a very long time.
 
It will work just fine for you if you plan to upgrade within the next 5 years. Browsing the web will work even longer word processing maybe only for the next 10 years...

You see, future proof at its best. Buy one if you want one.
 
By the time developers took advantage of C2D, it took years. If you want portability, you might find that the 15" is very heavy and large. I have a 13" and a 15" unibody and I've had Airs. The Air is very light but the 13" MBP has the advantage in power, so if you only have one computer, the Air is out.

That leaves you with the 13" MBP. But that only comes with an ancient C2D, which I had with 2GHz back in 2006. Frankly, four years in computing is a lot and in my opinion, the current C2D Apple portables represent an awful value for money.

I'd wait for an i3 or i5 MBP with 13". If we are lucky, they will have optional matte screen too. The i3 is not much faster with current applications (and it's still a dual-core), but more and more future releases will be optimised to i3, i5 and i7 processors, eventually making C2Ds slower than what the clock speed figures would suggest. But I wouldn't expect anything at the level of the PPC-Intel transition, which was very painful.
 
The 15" is more "Future Proof" than the 13" because of the i5, but the 13 is cheaper. If I were you, I would get the 2.66 ghz 13" because it has 2 separate 2.66ghz cores, but the 15" is more powerful (with 4 things open), but for just one the 13" 2.66ghz would be better. Unless you could get the i7 with hyper threading, get the 2.66 ghz 13"
 
lol @ future proof. Do you honestly think any computer could possibly be future proof? You could spend $10,000 and it will still be outdated next year.
 
No I am not naive to think anything especially computers will be future proof but it is a relative term.
Any hopes of thew 13" getting the i5 in the near future?
 
The C2D seems like it will be around for a while longer, and if you are happy with the set-up I would not let that get in the way of purchasing a 13", as I really like the size of it better than the 15" MBP
 
Nothing's future proof really. I think you need to go to the Apple Store and take a test drive on a system to see if it fits your needs. If it does, go for it NOW.
 
What would be your dream setup?

The main thing is to have a process more than a single particular setup. I've tried all sorts of home-built systems, including water cooled, phase change, etc... The conclusion I've reached is that upgrading every 6 months is more important than trying to get the fastest possible system at one point of time. The time and energy I used to spend optimizing my hardware I now spend making sure it's easy to swap out my current machine for a new machine with the least downtime.

Gabe Newell
Co-founder of Valve
Click to expand...

http://gabe.newell.usesthis.com/


Now, that's a bit extreme and is gaming-oriented, but the same principle applies to non-gamers in my opinion. (just swap "6 months" with "2-3 years")

I mean, today I can buy a 1000€ 13" MBP or a 2000€ 15" Core i7 512mb MBP. If future-proofing my buy means spending 1000€ more, well I could as well save those 1000€ and 2 years later buy a Quad-core USB 3.0 Lightpeak SATA 6gbps IPS Snow Lion Liquidmetal Macbook Pro 13" with that money.

OR I could spend those 1000€ so I can get the i7 and GT 330M 512mb whose power I *****SO****** need for reading emails, watching TV shows, browsing the web and doing light office work. Or not.

My 2 cents on "future proofing at any cost".
 
No computer is "future-proof". Buy the computer you need now and that will fit your needs for the period of time you expect to own it.

The Core i5/i7 is definitely faster than the C2D, but it's really an evolutionary step. There's really nothing significant a Core i5 can do that a C2D can't, although it will do processor-intensive tasks a fair bit faster.

If you're really planning on just web browsing, office apps, and other typical stuff, the C2D should be more than fine. I have an original 4 year old Core Duo MacBook that still does all of that stuff just fine. (Heck, even the PowerBook G4 I still have laying around can do a decent job of web browsing.)

It really depends on what you need - for "everyday" tasks, the 13" will be just fine and the portability and battery life may be more valuable than the Core i5 in the 15". And with the money you save you could just choose to buy a new computer sooner than if you buy a 15" with the Core i5. Especially considering you can get the 13" for $999 if you live near a Micro Center store.

IMO unless you are a hardcore gamer or are doing computationally intensive work such as 3D modeling or heavy photo/video editing the difference between the Core i5 and C2D is only modest. It's certainly nothing as significant a structural change as the 64-bit transition from Core Duo to C2D. And there are other bottlenecks, such as the hard disk, that still limit day-to-day performance as much or more than CPU power.

To me the real issue around being future-proof is about connectivity, not processor speed. New standards such as USB 3.0 or Light Peak will end up making any new MBP more obsolete than a difference in processor speed. A 13" MBP will be somewhat slower than a 15" MBP on some tasks, but both will run the same software for the foreseeable future. But both at some point be unable to connect to new devices that use new connection standards.

----------------------------------
Returning Mac Junkie
- MBP 13" (2010). MacBook 13" (Core Duo), PowerBook G4 (Aluminum)
- RIP PowerBook G3 (Pismo), Power Computing Mac Clone, Quadra 660AV, Apple IIgs, Apple IIc
 
The 13" MBP will do everything just fine for years to come. In normal use, you won't even notice any real difference in performance between the 13" and 15". If you do some serious number crunching (most people don't) then obviously the i5/i7 will win. But that doesn't mean that the C2D is slow or anything.

People are always after the latest and greatest. Once Intel releases their next CPU model people will be "oh my i5 is so slow" because it's not the latest thing anymore, even though in reality it performs just great.

If the 13" is the right size and resolution for your needs, get it. It will work just fine for many years to come.
 
BBQ BOY said:
Hey guys and gals. I am wanting to get a portable MacBook Pro. Uses will be for taking in the car to work and working on it doing some doucuments(but not many at all), web browsing, sofa web browsing for the wife and emails. Could do some photo/video downloading from cameras if on vacation with the family and emails.
No gaming and no hard core graphics. I have a iMac at home.
Anyway I was speaking witrh a friend of mine yesterday and in his opinion the 13" C2D is not going to be future proof enough as software/hardware conitues to beefed up.
My main reason for the 13" is poratabiity but not as much as price is a factor.
Iv'e read the 13" vs. 15" debate 100 times but I am no better off on that decision.
Click to expand...

By the time the Core 2 Duo in the 13" MBP is feeling its age, the i5 chips will be, too. The only thing that would possibly be considered future proof anymore is the i7, but spending gobs of money to future proof your computer seems silly when you can save the difference, and buy a whole new computer a few years later.
 
Surely said:
Is your friend shambo?
Ah, memories...........
Click to expand...
What has become of good ol' common sense? There is little enough to "future proof" in the electronics field, computers are outdated in one to two years these days!
Yet many of us have old Macs that get the job done just fine, even when they are old technology. Coined by the infamous Shambo on this forum (for those of you lucky enough to not have seen his persistant posts!), the whole concept of "future proofing" is at least a contradiction in terms. There is no such beast.
Of course you can hedge your bets by buying the latest technology, but it is really in vain given the speed at which the computer industry is evolving.
Enough already.... that mention of Shambo brought out the rant in me :eek:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back