2010 MBP 13" low end vs 13" High end

[m7ammed]

Hello first time poster, I want to buy a 13" MBP, which is going to be my first Mac so I'm really excited. I already sold my old Sony laptop, and I'm waiting now for the Apple resellers here to get the new MBP in which should be in 7-10 days.

The question I have now is that I do some photography work (not alot) and I want to do some amature video editing (AVCHD) and I was thinking of getting Final Cut Express. Now I'm not considering the the 15" because I can't stretch my budget for that and I love the size of the 13" and I think that the 15" is to big for me. Also I would be doing web browsing and some other stuff. As the title says, what do you recommend I go for the low end 13" or high end 13" ?

 

[Hellhammer]

I would get the 2.4GHz. 2.66GHz is ~10% faster but as it's just a hobby for you, I'm sure you can wait few secs longer while encoding a video. Save the money towards bigger HD and external HD

 

[m7ammed]

Do you think it would have any issues running those things?

 

[Hellhammer]

Do you think it would have any issues running those things?

It'll run them fine. The 260MHz won't affect the speed much, only when you're e.g. exporting the vid from FCP

 

[UKBeast]

Hello first time poster, I want to buy a 13" MBP, which is going to be my first Mac so I'm really excited. I already sold my old Sony laptop, and I'm waiting now for the Apple resellers here to get the new MBP in which should be in 7-10 days.

The question I have now is that I do some photography work (not alot) and I want to do some amature video editing (AVCHD) and I was thinking of getting Final Cut Express. Now I'm not considering the the 15" because I can't stretch my budget for that and I love the size of the 13" and I think that the 15" is to big for me. Also I would be doing web browsing and some other stuff. As the title says, what do you recommend I go for the low end 13" or high end 13" ?

You will not notice significant performance increase with the high end and that makes it pointless to choose high end over the low end. Because the price gap is too much to make it attractive to buy.

If I were you, I would get the low end one and upgrade the hard disk drive to a SSD so by doing this you will be paying the same amount money that you would have been paying to the high end one but your computer will perform a lot faster than the high end one.

 

[m7ammed]

You will not notice significant performance increase with the high end and that makes it pointless to choose high end over the low end. Because the price gap is too much to make it attractive to buy.

If I were you, I would get the low end one and upgrade the hard disk drive to a SSD so by doing this you will be paying the same amount money that you would have been paying to the low end one but your computer will perform a lot faster than the high end one.

Well Guess I'm going for the low end one, as I don't really need the extra HDD as my old Sony had 250 GB and I only used around 80 from that. Processor is insignificant increase. I'm juts going to put the money towards buying Final Cut Express 4.

 

[jake.f]

Sorry for the hijack but would there be much difference between the two for using Photoshop CS4? I am not a pro photographer but I shoot in RAW and process in CS4.

 

[Hellhammer]

Sorry for the hijack but would there be much difference between the two for using Photoshop CS4? I am not a pro photographer but I shoot in RAW and process in CS4.

Not really.. Photoshop is RAM intensive, not CPU. 2.4GHz does exactly the same as 2.66GHz, but only few nanoseconds slower

 

[notjustjay]

If you want to work with AVCHD video, especially on a Mac (which transcodes it to AIC or ProRes) you will want the BIGGEST hard drive you can afford.

 

[elppa]

If I were you, I would get the low end one and upgrade the hard disk drive to a SSD so by doing this you will be paying the same amount money that you would have been paying to the high end one but your computer will perform a lot faster than the high end one.

Very good advice.

I have a first gen MacBook Pro and most of the time the CPU is idling around 10% or less.

Sometimes Apple does things like boost the cache/bus speeds to differentiate between the models, but they haven't done that with the 13".

An SSD makes a difference for startup (significant), application launch, spotlight search (file access is quicker) and general performance (memory in swap can be pulled out quicker). The difference this will make to your computing experience vs a few extra MHz definitely shouldn't be overlooked.

 

[m7ammed]

Thanks for the advice, I will get the low end one and save up some money and upgrade to SSD at some point later with some more RAM so I get some upgraded performance later when I feel the computer isn't as new

 

[johnnymg]

Thanks for the advice, I will get the low end one and save up some money and upgrade to SSD at some point later with some more RAM so I get some upgraded performance later when I feel the computer isn't as new

That's an excellent decision! The upgraded 13" isn't a very good "deal" and the difference between it and the base model in processing AVCHD will be negligible.

*** I would recommend getting a small 500G-1T external drive (USB and FW800) and using it for all of your video files.

JohnG

 

[carbonfly]

Thanks for the advice, I will get the low end one and save up some money and upgrade to SSD at some point later with some more RAM so I get some upgraded performance later when I feel the computer isn't as new

That's what I did. Got the 2.4 and upgraded to an Intel X25-M SSD. Its blazing fast.

 

[weezycarterf]

That's what I did. Got the 2.4 and upgraded to an Intel X25-M SSD. Its blazing fast.

When you install the SSD do you have to replace your other hard disk and do you have to re-install the OS into the new hard drive?

Also, did you get the 80gb version?

 

[Cyth]

When you install the SSD do you have to replace your other hard disk and do you have to re-install the OS into the new hard drive?

Also, did you get the 80gb version?

Unless he modded it by removing the the MBPs Superdrive, I'm quite sure he has the SSD because it was BTO (Built to Order).

AFAIK Currently you cannot get your MBP built to have the SSD and HDD, It's one or the other.

 

[weezycarterf]

Unless he modded it by removing the the MBPs Superdrive, I'm quite sure he has the SSD because it was BTO (Built to Order).

AFAIK Currently you cannot get your MBP built to have the SSD and HDD, It's one or the other.

Sorry, but so that means he basically chose the SSD upgrade from Apple itself right?

 

[m7ammed]

Crap I called all apple resellers/distributors over here, and they say its going to be another week to 2 weeks until the new MBPs start coming in. Ahhh the wait is killing me .