Broke my 17", may still be useful. Search answered most questions, a few remain :)

[Mr. Chewbacca]

OK, so background info, may or may not be useful. I currently own a 2011 17" 8gb ram / 750gb
2.2 GHz quad, Radeon HD 6750M 1024 MB. I broke the screen..bad. Replacing the screen would be crazy expensive, selling a busted mac will get me nothing so I have been using it with an external monitor, keyboard, trackpad, and 2 external drives (5tb combined) not counting the 3tb between two time capsules.

I would like to get another machine I can grow with, if I hadn't broken the 17" I would most likely just be upgrading the ram and HDD but I like having one docked so someday the new one may be docked, replacing the 17", and I'll get whatever ultra compact laptop comes out at the time, years from now. I seem to use a lot of hdd space so the limited amount available on the new machines was a problem... until I decided to keep the old one. I'm thinking I will use the old one for the big data hogs like syncing all of those iOS devices, photo library, and downloaded videos. With all of those gone I shouldn't need much space on the new one??

Anyone run into issues trying to compartmentalize info in that way? Do you find things like iCloud, Dropbox, and google drive are sufficient to run multiple macs (I use all three). Would buying the remote desktop from Apple be worth it with just 2 machines or do you think TeamViewer is enough?

What to buy?? I think I'm pretty much set on this unless you think I'm just flushing money down the drain. I'm sure Apple planned it this way but at first I looked at referbs but the FT trackpad is kinda awesome and the new SSD is so fast.. 13" looked good but kick it up to 16gb and it is almost the same price as the 15" quad core.... then (with the student discount) it is only a few hundred more to get a much nicer graphics card and the ssd is not just larger but faster.. a lot faster, something about the 256gb basically being 2 smaller ones and the 512 being a single unit? The graphics card could come in handy if I do use this thing as a docked machine later.... Am I crazy or is this reasonable if I can afford it?

Lastly, does anyone know of any articles that give tips on running 2 machines, things like sharing photo stream but occasionally moving older ones to the backup drives to save space, being able to remote access external drives. Am I missing anything?

Thanks everyone!!

 

[Cuniac]

This is a similar problem I was dealing with when I bought my recent 2015 15in MBP. I have a 2011 17in with a 1TB platter, and my new MBP is only 512 SSD. But here is why it might not be an issue.

First is Apple has some really good cloud services that will help out a lot depending on how large your iTunes and Photo library is. I have 130GB of music, but with iTunes match I can stream all of that to my new MBP, so it takes zero space. Next iPhoto library in Mac OS 10.10 does the same thing, I had 200GB of photos that are now in the cloud. There are also on my 17, but I didn't need to move them to my new 15in. Also with a clean install all the temp files and iphone back ups didn't move over and that save a lot as well. I now have 120GB free and I set 220 aside for boot camp

I would go with the 15in with dGPU. if your replacing that 17, this will feel the most comparable to what you had, if you can afford it. Otherwise the non-dgup 15 is good, the IRIS pro 5200 is slightly faster than what GPU your 2011 had, so it will be as fast there, just wont feel like a big upgrade.

 

[eyoungren]

I can just add my experience here, although my Macs are PowerPC in nature with only one 2006 17" Intel MBP (recently purchased).

My old TiBook 400 died in Nov. 2009 so I replaced it with a 17" PowerBook G4. The screen on that Mac went bad about a month later or so, so I got a 17" PowerBook G4 DLSD shortly thereafter (while keeping the old 17" PB). Shortly after that I realized I could replace the first Mac's screen cheaply so did. Now I had two working 17" PowerBook G4s and a problem.

So, I simply split the duties of one Mac between the two. I have since replaced the original 17" PowerBook (with another of the same model) and the MBP has replaced my 17" DLSD. But both Macs do different things. My MBP is for on the go graphic design and my PowerBook is for web browsing, email and light word processing.

My PowerMac G4 Quicksilver at home is for home-based design work. Both my Quicksilver and my Mac Pro at work are accessible through AFP over the internet because I opened the port in both routers. I can screen share (OSX VNC) and connect to either from wherever I'm at. Since the MP at work can run Box and Google Drive it's a simple matter of connecting to the Mac with my PowerPC Macs and then being able to drop files in.

Dropbox is still working across all of my Macs (yes there is a way around Dropbox's cutoff of PowerPC support) so there's that as well. Also, my QS at home has 2 1TB SATA hard drives (I installed a PCI SATA card) and has more than one large external HD connected. So, all the way around storage is not an issue for me.

 

[Mr. Chewbacca]

This is a similar problem I was dealing with when I bought my recent 2015 15in MBP. I have a 2011 17in with a 1TB platter, and my new MBP is only 512 SSD. But here is why it might not be an issue.

First is Apple has some really good cloud services that will help out a lot depending on how large your iTunes and Photo library is. I have 130GB of music, but with iTunes match I can stream all of that to my new MBP, so it takes zero space. Next iPhoto library in Mac OS 10.10 does the same thing, I had 200GB of photos that are now in the cloud. There are also on my 17, but I didn't need to move them to my new 15in. Also with a clean install all the temp files and iphone back ups didn't move over and that save a lot as well. I now have 120GB free and I set 220 aside for boot camp

I would go with the 15in with dGPU. if your replacing that 17, this will feel the most comparable to what you had, if you can afford it. Otherwise the non-dgup 15 is good, the IRIS pro 5200 is slightly faster than what GPU your 2011 had, so it will be as fast there, just wont feel like a big upgrade.

I forgot that I even had iTunes match. That should come in handy! Thanks!

I find the cloud drives super useful for documents but for larger things like video it seems to slow to be useful. Do you run into the same problem?

 

[Mr. Chewbacca]

I can just add my experience here, although my Macs are PowerPC in nature with only one 2006 17" Intel MBP (recently purchased).

My old TiBook 400 died in Nov. 2009 so I replaced it with a 17" PowerBook G4. The screen on that Mac went bad about a month later or so, so I got a 17" PowerBook G4 DLSD shortly thereafter (while keeping the old 17" PB). Shortly after that I realized I could replace the first Mac's screen cheaply so did. Now I had two working 17" PowerBook G4s and a problem.

So, I simply split the duties of one Mac between the two. I have since replaced the original 17" PowerBook (with another of the same model) and the MBP has replaced my 17" DLSD. But both Macs do different things. My MBP is for on the go graphic design and my PowerBook is for web browsing, email and light word processing.

My PowerMac G4 Quicksilver at home is for home-based design work. Both my Quicksilver and my Mac Pro at work are accessible through AFP over the internet because I opened the port in both routers. I can screen share (OSX VNC) and connect to either from wherever I'm at. Since the MP at work can run Box and Google Drive it's a simple matter of connecting to the Mac with my PowerPC Macs and then being able to drop files in.

Dropbox is still working across all of my Macs (yes there is a way around Dropbox's cutoff of PowerPC support) so there's that as well. Also, my QS at home has 2 1TB SATA hard drives (I installed a PCI SATA card) and has more than one large external HD connected. So, all the way around storage is not an issue for me.

That sounds great, do you use any kind of specific software for this sharing files through this port?

 

[eyoungren]

That sounds great, do you use any kind of specific software for this sharing files through this port?

Not to connect to my Mac. I simply opened the Apple File Sharing port in my router so all I have to do is connect like I would to a server. Only I enter the IP address of the router. It's exactly the same as trying to connect to a computer inside your own network.

If I want to view my Mac's screen though I have OSX VNC running on various Macs and I usually just use Chicken of the VNC to connect (again using the router's IP address).

 

[lowendlinux]

If you can replace the screen I have one

 

[Mr. Chewbacca]

If you can replace the screen I have one

WOW. that is incredibly kind of you to offer. Mine is the anti-glare so I think it is crazy hard to replace and since I will be docking it and using the new lighter faster newer one for outside the house I don't think I will ever un-dock it again.

But seriously... THANK YOU for the offer. I love the community here!!!