Based on your siggy, I feel that you have excellent taste in gadgets. What do you think of my purchase? Being a college kid, I didn't have an infinite budget sadly. I think a 2012 MBP Retina with a SuperDrive for $975 shipped is a pretty decent deal! Sure, the latest model would've only cost $200 more, but then I'd only have 4GB RAM vs. the 8 my machine comes with.
It is a great purchase. Right now I am at college, and I decided I was getting the best bang for my buck with the iMac when compared to the MacBooks (I also never needed portability). One of my friends at college has the MacBook Pro you have just purchased and it is still a very good buy. With the RAM not being user-upgradable in the retina MacBook Pro's, the decision to have have gone for the rMBP with 4Gb of RAM would have been a big mistake.
The processor difference is not massive, and it has to be noted that the MacBook Pro with retina display will have to push 4 times the number of pixels compared to your MacBook Pro. This means that once you have subtracted this amount of extra CPU usage (as well as GPU usage) needed to run these retina applications, I would argue that the performance of the retina would be equal if not worse when compared to your MacBook Pro.
From what I have seen, 4Gb of RAM is actually reasonable with OSX Mavericks (due to RAM compression mainly), but I see the next iteration of OSX to be a big change (maybe a kernel re-write, GUI change...) meaning 4Gb of RAM could very well be the minimum RAM requirement for that. 8Gb of RAM will defiantly get you a lot more out of your MacBook before you upgrade.
From what I have seen on my friends MacBook Pro that is the same model as yours (although he has 4Gb), is that it has a lot of life in it left. I have seen it get through Photoshop, iMovie, Premiere Pro, Illustrator... without any problems.
This machine is highly upgradable as well when compared to the RMBP, as you can still upgrade the HDD to an SSD later on when you have the money to do so. And if you find yourself not using the SuperDrive, you can actually keep your HDD in your MacBook Pro and replace the SuperDrive with an SSD. It is a bit of a complicated job, but that way you could have your Operating System on the SSD, along with all your applications, then any files on the HDD. This is of course just an option that you have if you wish, and something you would not have been able to do with the entry Retina model. This is of course you see yourself benefiting with an SSD.
I have ran many tests myself on the whole HDD vs SSD argument, and the SSD gives better boot time, applications launch faster first time, and importing/exporting is much faster. But when you brake this down, most people only restart their Mac once in a blue moon (there are some than only even due it when the software update requires it) so Boot-up times are certainly not worth paying all the extra money for an SSD. When it comes to launching apps, the SSD opens them up faster first time but once you have opened then up on a HDD, the Apps get cached in RAM (this is where 8Gb of RAM is highly more beneficial when compared to 4Gb). This means that when you open the application again, it opens almost instantly (or as fast as the SSD). Last night, I opened the application folder, selected all of my applications, then double tapped (opening all of them at the same time). The first time I done this it taken around 30-40 seconds for all of the apps to open up (and SSD would have done it in less than 10 seconds). Now that all apps where cached in RAM, I closed them all and done the same test. This time they all opened up in around 6-7 seconds. Overall, I would say that you are fine with your HDD in your MacBook right now, but if you are doing a lot of importing and exporting, you can always replace either the SuperDrive or the HDD with an SSD.
For your budget, the MacBook you chose is easily the better deal of the two. The entry Retina MacBook is fine if you want to replace it in 2 years time but from what I have seen from the non retina is that it should easily get 5 years of good use before performance is lacking. I hope you enjoy your purchase
And thank you for the compliment on my Signature
