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13" MacBook Pro for College

A

avb122

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 1, 2009
1
0
I'm looking to get a new 13" MBP for school next year as I spent last year with an HP laptop from my old college and found that it was really nice to have separate computers for work and for my personal stuff. Once I transferred, I had to give the HP laptop back which leaves me with one laptop--my gorilla 17" MBP.

I'm not getting rid of the 17", but since I have it and plan to continue doing most of (well, just about all of my media work) on it, do you think that I'm OK getting the lower-end model 13" MacBook Pro? The 13" will likely only be used for the Microsoft Office suite, research, light browsing, etc. Nothing heavy. I might connect it to the external hard drive that has all of my music on it, but beyond that I don't expect to use it the same way I use my 17". I don't think the extra .25 ghz, larger hard drive, or more memory will be especially necessary for what I need to use it for.

I'm pretty sure I know the answer to my question but I just wanted to get some more advice from people well versed in the topic before committing to purchasing the lower-end model. If anybody has some experience as to why the 2.53 ghz model may be better than the 2.26 I'd love to hear it as well.
 
If it helps at all...

I have a 2 yr old 2.0ghz macbook as my sole machine. It gets used for engineering work (matlab etc), music creation (logic, garageband, ableton) and pretty much everything else other than gaming and it works flawlessly still now. The only thing i can fault is the screen size but even that you get used to and work around it.

So i can only imagine that a 13" macbook pro would be amazing no matter what clock speed.

But its all personal taste
 
If you are keeping your 17" you probably don't even need a MBP for normal usage. My advice just get a cheap MB and use it for 4 years. Then after college just buy one nice notebook. I bought a MBP to use for all four years (for all my needs) halfway through and still holding strong.
Its up to your personal taste, if you really feel like you need the MBP and have the cash get it, but the regular MB will more than suffice, both my mom and sister have low end models and they work great for everything.
You're better off saving some cash, you'll need beer $$$
 
15" or 17" pro's are nice for games or movies even. But seeing as you have a 17" already there's no real need for that since they offer better games for pc.
Good Luck
 
Agree with doucy. Get youself a MacBook, Apple still sells polycarbonate MacBooks, you know, people :)

From your description, its power is enough in order to have you satisfied with your product. Also, considering the price, the educational discount and the fact that you get a free Touch, it's the best deal you can make.
 
I am using the lowest priced 13" MBP model with free iPod Touch and I love it. IMO there is no reason the get the higher priced model for a little CPU gain at min. $200 more. Take the savings and upgrade the RAM and HD yourself. I got rid of the CD drive and installed a OptiBay. Now I have 1TB of HD storage (2x 500gb).
 
Seems a lot cheaper to just create 2 accounts on your current macbook to keep your data separate. If that isn't good enough, make 2 partitions with individual OS installs for biz and personal.
 
If you are used to the two notebook system, then why not switch to two Mac's; if you are not used to this system, then I would recommend against it, as there is a high rate of it not working, especially in college.
 
thegoldenmackid said:
If you are used to the two notebook system, then why not switch to two Mac's; if you are not used to this system, then I would recommend against it, as there is a high rate of it not working, especially in college.
Click to expand...
I don't get your post at all. He says he's got a 17" MBP and wants to buy another 13" one. You tell him to switch to two Macs. Or were you talking about desktops instead of notebooks? oO

Next, what is not going to work in college? The applications?
 
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