After seeing the lackluster improvements to the 13 in MBP, I am now trying to figure out whether I should go with a new 13 in or an old 15. Here's what I'll be doing with my MBP.
I'm a graduate student in the biological sciences so I will be using the macbook for:
Since I work for a university, I have access to their tech store which may allow me to purchase a brand new 2011 15 in MBP at a discount (TBD) as they bring in the new 2012 models. I would like to keep my budget under $1500, hopefully nearer to 1200. I currently plan on getting the 2012 13" MBP ($1099) with an added SSD (+$100) and apple care ($249) for a total of $1448. But given the superior CPU in the 2011 15", I am thinking about getting a refurbished or new model.
If I got the 2011 model, what would be the cost to upgrade the RAM from 4 GB to 8GB and what would be an estimate to put in a SSD (128 or 256 GB)?
So:
I'm a graduate student in the biological sciences so I will be using the macbook for:
- Writing
- Reading Papers
- Editing Microscope photos with Photoshop
- Managing large amounts of data with Excel (1000 data points for 10-20 groups)
- Creating figures and graphs with Illustrator
Since I work for a university, I have access to their tech store which may allow me to purchase a brand new 2011 15 in MBP at a discount (TBD) as they bring in the new 2012 models. I would like to keep my budget under $1500, hopefully nearer to 1200. I currently plan on getting the 2012 13" MBP ($1099) with an added SSD (+$100) and apple care ($249) for a total of $1448. But given the superior CPU in the 2011 15", I am thinking about getting a refurbished or new model.
If I got the 2011 model, what would be the cost to upgrade the RAM from 4 GB to 8GB and what would be an estimate to put in a SSD (128 or 256 GB)?
So:
- 2012 13" vs 2011 15" - which one?
- cost of upgrading 15" ?
