Building a desktop...and getting a mac. Need opinions.

[Stephen Dowling]

Hey everyone.

Right now I have a 15 inch Unibody MacBook Pro. The specs are in my signature. Anyways, I'm a high school student and I really need some advise. I love my MacBook Pro but I don't NEED a laptop very badly. Yes, its very nice to have when I need it, but I find myself using it at home connected to a monitor most of the time. I've decided to sell this MacBook Pro and build a desktop. However, I'd also like to have a lower spec'd Mac laptop for when I do want to use a portable. SO, this is where your help is important.

All together I'm looking at spending approx. $1,300 USD on computers. So, should I build a very, very good PC and buy an older PowerBook G4 or build a slightly lower spec'd PC and buy an older MacBook?

With the Mac I plan on just listening to iTunes, watching movies, web browsing, e-mail, and especially for making powerpoints and typing papers.

If you've made it this far, thanks for reading this. I'm really looking forward to ya'lls advice.

-Stephen.

 

[ARF900]

How much do you plan to get for the MBP, is the money from selling that included in your $1300 budget? how much money do you already have?

Also, what do you plan on using the PC for?

 

[Stephen Dowling]

The $1,300 budget it with the MacBook Pro included. I plan on using the PC for my gaming purposes, but I don't need anything very extreme.

 

[notblackmac]

Pickup a macbook off of ebay for around $500-600.00 Then use the rest of your money to build a decent gaming rig. Just my .02

 

[Hellhammer]

Get the MacBook for 949$ off the edu store along with the free iTouch. Sell the iTouch and you end up with ~800$ MacBook. That leaves 700$ for the PC which should be completely fine.

Get for example:

Case: Antec Three Hundred Black Steel - 60$
Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-P55-USB3 - 115$
CPU: Core i5-750 2.66GHz - 195$
RAM: G.Skill 2x2GB DDR3 1600MHz - 95$
PSU: OCZ Fatal1ty OCZ550FTY 550W - 70$
GPU: NVidia GTX 460 768MB - 200$
HD: Any 3.5" ~50$

Total: 785$

So for 85$ over your budget, you can get these and of course, change anything you want for cheaper price (for example AMD instead as they are little cheaper and thus you could make it for 700$)

 

[sammich]

Get the MacBook for 949$ off the edu store along with the free iTouch. Sell the iTouch and you end up with ~800$ MacBook. That leaves 700$ for the PC which should be completely fine.

Get for example:

Case: Antec Three Hundred Black Steel - 60$
Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-P55-USB3 - 115$
CPU: Core i5-750 2.66GHz - 195$
RAM: G.Skill 2x2GB DDR3 1600MHz - 95$
PSU: OCZ Fatal1ty OCZ550FTY 550W - 70$
GPU: NVidia GTX 460 768MB - 200$
HD: Any 3.5" ~50$

Total: 785$

So for 85$ over your budget, you can get these and of course, change anything you want for cheaper price (for example AMD instead as they are little cheaper and thus you could make it for 700$)

That spec sounds awfully familiar. Maybe it's the same spec you're recommending to me?

Either way, OP that is a very good spec for a budget performance computer. It's what I'm going for.