Buying my first Mac

[Giroux]

Hi all!
I'm a new poster, i planning on buying a new MBP in the next week or two and had a few questions for the community. I plan on purchasing the high end 15'' model. I will probobly opt for AppleCare just to ensure i get the most out of the investment. I'm leaning towards getting the 128gb ssd drive installed with it, i'm just not sure what I do really warrants getting it. I plan to do some light gaming, music/web surfing, some photoshop and school assignments. Im just not sure if I should just opt for the 7200 rpm drive and max out the RAM or give the ssd a go. I figured I could easily buy an external hard drive if space ever became an issue. I have heard the ssd user experience is great in terms of speed and overall performance. I apologize for posting this since I'm sure millions of threads like this get posted everyday but any help would be greatly appriciated!

 

[ECUpirate44]

Welcome to Mac!

The HDD is the bottleneck of your computer. An SSD is going to give you a huge speed boost in bootup time, app loading, and opening/saving large documents. 128GB is not all that much space so if you are considering that SSD, id look at an external as well.

As far as RAM goes, do not buy it from Apple as it is extremely over priced. Buy it with 4GB and use it for a few days. If you decide you really need 8GB, take a look at newegg or OWC. Do the upgrade yourself. It's dead simple to do.

 

[MartyF81]

SSD is 100% worth it. SSD is a game changer.

 

[Apple 26.2]

Congratulations on your decision... you won't regret it.

For how you describe its purpose, you'll be just fine with a base 15".