Back into the Mac world

[collinmac]

hi everybody,

been a while since i last posted, i got out of the mac racket for a while but i'm ready to get back in and i have a question.

i'm looking at buying a refurbished 15" rmbp from apple.ca here are the specs:

15.4-inch (diagonal) Retina display; 2880-by-1800 resolution at 220 pixels per inch
Quad-Core i7
8GB of 1600MHz DDR3L SDRAM
256GB Flash Storage
720p FaceTime HD Camera
NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M with 1GB of GDDR5 memory

I'm not too concerned with what is coming out in a few weeks. the price is $1599.00. Is this machine worth it? Should i find out what brand of screen they are using?

 

[GermanyChris]

If 8GB will do for you for the foreseeable future I cant think of a reason not to get it

 

[srsub3]

I am concerned about ram usage too... yesterday I tried to use as much ram as possible on my cMPB.... opened all the possible programs (excel, pp, word, safari, firefox, matlab running scripts, texshop compiling, iLife, GIMP and all the kind of stuff I can figure out using and I found that ram maximum used was only 8 giga.... so if u are a normal user I guess this is a perfect mac for you.

 

[collinmac]

yeah, i'm not a video editor, graphic editor, etc.

for me it's really just web browsing, movies, youtube, football manager.

the price for a cMBP is 1499 so i thought for the extra 100 it would be nice to have a hi-res screen.

 

[NewishMacGuy]

yeah, i'm not a video editor, graphic editor, etc.

for me it's really just web browsing, movies, youtube, football manager.

the price for a cMBP is 1499 so i thought for the extra 100 it would be nice to have a hi-res screen.

Yeah, for that usage you should be fine for a while if you're OK with only 256GB internal storage and being limited to 802.11n until your next major upgrade. At $1600, that's an awfully nice machine as long as you don't expect to be doing much heavy lifting.


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[Queen6]

Yeah, for that usage you should be fine for a while if you're OK with only 256GB internal storage and being limited to 802.11n until your next major upgrade. At $1600, that's an awfully nice machine as long as you don't expect to be doing much heavy lifting.


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This spec of Retina is more than capable of heavy lifting the BTO systems are faster, however not earth shatteringly so...

 

[Badrottie]

8GB is enough for me when I opened PS cs6, FCPX, and safari I still have 4.32GB free. Not bad…

 

[glenthompson]

The only time I want more than 8gb is when I have to run Windows under Parallels. Running a bunch of Mac apps doesn't get close for me.

 

[NewishMacGuy]

This spec of Retina is more than capable of heavy lifting the BTO systems are faster, however not earth shatteringly so...

Depends on what you need lifted. It's not the chip speed that's the limiting factor here as much as the 8GB RAM that can't be upgraded. Split that between the main OS and a single VM and that leaves you with 4GB per side, which is pretty slim these days.


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The only time I want more than 8gb is when I have to run Windows under Parallels. Running a bunch of Mac apps doesn't get close for me.

Et voila.

The additional headroom you get with 12 or 16GB is really helpful if you need to run Windows and OSX concurrently.

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[collinmac]

thanks everyone, i ended up getting the unit, should see it tomorrow or wednesday.

It's been a about 3 years since i last used a Mac, but i'm glad i'm back.