Can't decide which refurbished MBP to get...

[pcgeek12345]

Hey guys,

I am switching from PC to Mac, and can't decide which Macbook Pro 15 inch to get. I definitely want refurbished, as my grandfather has gotten all his Apple products refurbished and has never had one issue with them.

It will be used for:

• Office (I'm a student)
• VM work (Adobe CS4 under Windows 7)
• Light Video editing
• itunes
• very light gaming (GTA: VC and GTA: SA are my 2 games as of now, trying to decide whether to buy the Mac ports of them, or run them in XP under Bootcamp)

I am debating between these 2 models:

http://store.apple.com/us/product/FC372LL/A

$1,319
Originally released April 2010
15.4-inch LED-backlit glossy widescreen display (1440 x 900 pixel)
4GB (2 x 2GB) of 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM
500GB Serial ATA @ 5400 rpm
8x double-layer SuperDrive (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M graphics processor with 256MB of GDDR3 memory

OR:

http://store.apple.com/us/product/FC721LL/A

$1,359
Originally released February 2011
15.4-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit glossy widescreen display, 1440-by-900 resolution
4GB (2 x 2GB) of 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM
500GB Serial ATA @ 5400 rpm
8x double-layer SuperDrive (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
Intel HD Graphics 3000 and AMD Radeon HD 6490M


What are the differences between the 2010 and 2011 model?

Which would you guys recommend for my uses? How much of a performance will I see between the two?

It's only a $40 dollar difference, but I don't want to end up regretting my decision later on down the line.

Thanks guys!

 

[alust2013]

They are very similar machines, however the second one has a much more powerful CPU. I believe the graphics on the two are roughly the same, and they would both be fine for light gaming. I'd probably get the second one because it's newer, more powerful and has thunderbolt, plus it should help with VMs. You'll also want to upgrade to 8GB RAM after you get it. It's a cheap upgrade if you buy online and do it yourself.

 

[Xikum]

Hey guys,

I am switching from PC to Mac, and can't decide which Macbook Pro 15 inch to get. I definitely want refurbished, as my grandfather has gotten all his Apple products refurbished and has never had one issue with them.

It will be used for:

• Office (I'm a student)
• VM work (Adobe CS4 under Windows 7)
• Light Video editing
• itunes
• very light gaming (GTA: VC and GTA: SA are my 2 games as of now, trying to decide whether to buy the Mac ports of them, or run them in XP under Bootcamp)

I am debating between these 2 models:

http://store.apple.com/us/product/FC372LL/A

$1,319
Originally released April 2010
15.4-inch LED-backlit glossy widescreen display (1440 x 900 pixel)
4GB (2 x 2GB) of 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM
500GB Serial ATA @ 5400 rpm
8x double-layer SuperDrive (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M graphics processor with 256MB of GDDR3 memory

OR:

http://store.apple.com/us/product/FC721LL/A

$1,359
Originally released February 2011
15.4-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit glossy widescreen display, 1440-by-900 resolution
4GB (2 x 2GB) of 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM
500GB Serial ATA @ 5400 rpm
8x double-layer SuperDrive (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
Intel HD Graphics 3000 and AMD Radeon HD 6490M


What are the differences between the 2010 and 2011 model?

Which would you guys recommend for my uses? How much of a performance will I see between the two?

It's only a $40 dollar difference, but I don't want to end up regretting my decision later on down the line.

Thanks guys!

Why would you buy the first one? The second is a FAR superior deal. Spend the extra $40! The performance increase from the 2010 to the 2011 is very noticeable.

 

[newdeal]

...

It makes no sense to get the first one. If you want an older generation then wait until the 2.4ghz i5 comes back in stock at the refurb store. It is $1189 and the only differance between it and the first one you listed is 2.4ghz vs 2.53ghz (not noticable). The differance between the 2010 and 2011 models is the 2010 is a dual core i5 and the 2011 is a quad core i7 (so much better cpu). The 2011 has thunderbolt which is currently useless but may be useful in the future. Other than that they are the same. For what you do realistically they both will be totally fine and if it was me I would probobly get the cheaper one ($1189 one) because most likely thundrbolt will never amount to much and if it does it will take years to come down in price (by which time you will probobly have a new computer anyway) and most things are not limited in speed by the cpu anyway so for most tasks thry will feel the same speed. I agree you should upgrade either of them to 8gb of ram if you want to run a vm and as for gaming with a vm this is a bad idea you should just have your vm work through a bootcamp partition and when you want to game reboot into bootcamp directly to game

 

[warvanov]

Get the second one (the 2011 model). In fact, I'm not sure why the older one is priced as high as it is. The newer machine there will be a much better value.