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13" or 15" MBP
- Thread starter hayleywow
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It depends on your computational needs, as the 13" and 15" satisfy those differently.
Do you know your computational needs and if so, can you provide those for us in order to give you better help?
Do you know your computational needs and if so, can you provide those for us in order to give you better help?
I work in a school, so I'm upgrading my shabby school laptop...
Main uses:
Office - creating powerpoints etc
Internet
Final Cut Pro
Maybe bootcamp...
Needs to be easily portable, and at home I will be connecting it to an external display
Main uses:
Office - creating powerpoints etc
Internet
Final Cut Pro
Maybe bootcamp...
Needs to be easily portable, and at home I will be connecting it to an external display
For your stated needs, both models will do just fine.
If you expect more work in FCP X though, the 15" has the advantage of being a quad-core Mac, thus transcoding the footage will not take as long.
And the screen of the 15" High Res model also offers much more pixels than the 13" screen, which can be helpful with FCP X, but as you stated, you already have an external monitor, thus the 13" should suffice.
As for RAM and HDD/SSD, you can do upgrades to it yourself, no need to pay Apple prices.
Also take a look at the Refurbished Mac section in the Apple Online Store, maybe you can get your model for less there.
If you expect more work in FCP X though, the 15" has the advantage of being a quad-core Mac, thus transcoding the footage will not take as long.
And the screen of the 15" High Res model also offers much more pixels than the 13" screen, which can be helpful with FCP X, but as you stated, you already have an external monitor, thus the 13" should suffice.
As for RAM and HDD/SSD, you can do upgrades to it yourself, no need to pay Apple prices.
Also take a look at the Refurbished Mac section in the Apple Online Store, maybe you can get your model for less there.
The comparison tool on the online apple store is quite helpful too.
I found that actually, after I upgraded to a solid drive and increased the ram on the regular models (via mac store), it is cheaper or the same price to go with the retina model (and you get a very slightly faster cpu). It of course depends if you think those upgrades are important to you, or if you'd rather diy on a user serviceable machine.
I've lugged both a 12" (powerbook) and 15" (MBP) around campus/public transport in my time and if you still have a few years of school left I would lean heavily towards the 13". You give a little in performance but sometimes portability is worth it.
I found that actually, after I upgraded to a solid drive and increased the ram on the regular models (via mac store), it is cheaper or the same price to go with the retina model (and you get a very slightly faster cpu). It of course depends if you think those upgrades are important to you, or if you'd rather diy on a user serviceable machine.
I've lugged both a 12" (powerbook) and 15" (MBP) around campus/public transport in my time and if you still have a few years of school left I would lean heavily towards the 13". You give a little in performance but sometimes portability is worth it.
Why don't you want to get the Retina model? At $1499 you already get an SSD and 8 gigs of RAM. Its more portable than the regular MBP, and you'll experience a lot better performance. Not to mention the beautiful Retina display. Why not!
You have 12 months after purchase to buy applecare but I would certainly say - yes do it! Laptops tend to be more likely get problems and more expensive to fix. Both my apple laptops still work today (9 and 5 years old) but only because of extensive work done under applecare. In both cases without applecare I would have been better off just buying a new computer.
The reason I haven't gone for the rMBP is because I want to be able to upgrade the RAM / SSD and add a storage drive at some point...
Thanks for the advice guys