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Help me decide my next buy

M

MrJSmith

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 15, 2011
13
0
So here's my situation... Right now I'm on a Macbook black I bought in 2008. Love it and hell, it still works just fine but I'm at a crossroads. I'd like to go in and purchase a new Macbook but I'm not sure what direction I want to go.

When I bought this I thought I'd use it for more than I am now. I bought an HD video camera and I love to play with video editing. Up until a week or so I wanted to purchase Final Cut to take the idea a little more professional but I haven't seen to much good from the new release of the product. Back to the original point, I use it for that and my daily tasks (iCal, iMail, Firefox, YouTube, etc.) that don't work so hard on my computer.

So from that I was leaning into the new Macbook Airs that debuted today. It looks like the reviews are streaming in nothing but good so far so it's making it a hard choice between a 13'in MBA and a 13'in MBP. I'm not worried on costs but I'm not blowing a huge amount of cash for the upscale models.

Any suggestions? Or more do nice experts ;) need a little more info from me?

***Side note*** If you buy a MBA, is buying the SuperDrive something else you almost have to purchase coming from a previous Macbook that has an optical drive?
 
I would say buy the MBP if you dont plan on traveling all the time. The air is nice, but that super drive add on will be a pain and not worth it if your anything but a road warrior. Just my opinion..:)
 
Those opinions matter. I'm not much of a road warrior, per say, yet. I have another year in college then from there it's hopefully going to a bigger city and make it. I'd like to travel more tho. I've haul my MacBook around now-a-days and it doesn't even seem much of a pain. The most difficult part is making sure I don't damage it.

My MacBook's processor is a 2.4GHz duo core. How does it amount to the new
13'in 2.3 GHz i5 processor?

On top of that, what about the on-board graphic chip set comparing to what I have now? Any noticeable comparisons?
 
you can google benchmarks, but I am almost positive that the new macbook air processor will be just as good if not better than the 13 MBP. The graphics should be similar as well. I think both the MBA and MBP have shared graphics.
 
If you want a mac that is more for traveling, word documents, note taking, etc (school stuff) then go for the macbook air. If you want a mac that can do all of that and still be similar to your macbook then get the macbook pro. but if it were me i would choose the 13 inch macbook pro over the macbook air.
 
MrJSmith said:
Those opinions matter. I'm not much of a road warrior, per say, yet. I have another year in college then from there it's hopefully going to a bigger city and make it. I'd like to travel more tho. I've haul my MacBook around now-a-days and it doesn't even seem much of a pain. The most difficult part is making sure I don't damage it.

My MacBook's processor is a 2.4GHz duo core. How does it amount to the new
13'in 2.3 GHz i5 processor?

On top of that, what about the on-board graphic chip set comparing to what I have now? Any noticeable comparisons?
Click to expand...

I would have to say go with the MBP! I mean the air would work great but at least with the pro you are able to upgrade memory/hard drive meaning it is going to go for the long haul. Not to say the air isn't I mean you still have your MacBook right. Just to me those kinds of options matter a lot. I mean throw in a ssd hard drive down the road and that MBP is going to run really fast!
 
That MBP does sound like the best bet. Mobility is still just as good to me as the MBA. I can lug around an extra bit of wait.

The SSD HDD that you're talking about making it faster, Manzor, how so?
 
MrJSmith said:
That MBP does sound like the best bet. Mobility is still just as good to me as the MBA. I can lug around an extra bit of wait.

The SSD HDD that you're talking about making it faster, Manzor, how so?
Click to expand...

The current MacBook Pro (2.3ghz) blows your MacBook (2.4ghz) right out of the water. In short, due to a newer architecture, it is blazing fast.

The SSD (solid state drive) is basically a hard drive that is made out of flash storage (a giant USB drive, basically). Since there are no moving parts, it's extremely fast and durable.

But, let's go back to what you do on the computer; iCal, iMail, Firefox, YouTube, etc.

They really aren't demanding tasks and would be fine on your current MacBook. I generally would advise you to keep your computer, but I noticed that laptop doesn't have the multitouch trackpad. The new trackpad is very nice in general (and is pretty important for Lion imo since it uses a lot of gestures). With that being said, I guess I would just tell you that maybe you should upgrade now. Let alone the trackpad (which is extremely useful for Lion), you'll basically get a much faster laptop. You're going to upgrade anyways and the resale value of your MacBook is only going to drop more in the future, so you might as well just get the new computer now.
 
wordoflife,
That's the type of advice I'm looking forward to getting from these forums. Kudos to you.

About the laptop, I do want the upgrade because of the much larger upscale models that Apple is dishing out to the public now. I know they'll be focusing more of their products towards it. I do want this computer to last me about 4years which I believe won't be a problem with the upgrades you can purchase but what do the cost of them now-a-days look like? And what kind of upgrades are available?

13'in i7 will probably service me just enough and from their I may look into a iMac for a desktop.

BTW wordoflife, that 2.3GHz processor was actually what was offered with the new MBAs not the MBPs.
 
if you haven't made some sort of transition to digital media throughout the ownership of your current macbook (i.e. you still use physical media) then a superdrive is something you are going to want to look in to if you go with an air. you don't necessary have to get an external "superdrive," it's actually quite expensive in comparison to some external disk drives, you could pick an external CD/DVD drive up for around $35-$40 that will "plug-and-play" with a mac or pc notebook that lacks an internal drive.

i don't think you could really go wrong with either, but here are just some things to consider. the mbp will serve you better in terms of performance than the mba will. the mba may seem quicker out of the box as it comes with an ssd, but you could just as easily put an ssd into a mbp and it will be even faster thanks to it's expandability beyond that (up to 16gb ram [i'd recommend 8gb], while the mba is still at 4gb) as well as the faster processor. the air, however, is more portable of course due to its form factor and weight. if you could see yourself needing such portability or at least making more use of it than you would, say, a faster processor, then the 1.6-1.8ghz i5/i7 in the more portable form factor may be worth it to you.

personally, i would go with the mbp in this case. you didn't really mention portability and you currently have a macbook, and well, they're all laptops after all in a 13'' or under footprint so they are all reasonably portable. i think you would benefit much more from the faster processor and expandability that is available with the mbp. it should be a fine choice for you, plus if you're near a microcenter you can pick one up for $999 and keep the rest of the money or put it towards that 8gb ram and ssd, plus you already have the disc drive in there internally.

good luck. :]
 
MrJSmith said:
wordoflife,
That's the type of advice I'm looking forward to getting from these forums. Kudos to you.

About the laptop, I do want the upgrade because of the much larger upscale models that Apple is dishing out to the public now. I know they'll be focusing more of their products towards it. I do want this computer to last me about 4years which I believe won't be a problem with the upgrades you can purchase but what do the cost of them now-a-days look like? And what kind of upgrades are available?

13'in i7 will probably service me just enough and from their I may look into a iMac for a desktop.

BTW wordoflife, that 2.3GHz processor was actually what was offered with the new MBAs not the MBPs.
Click to expand...

The only upgrades you can do to your laptop are the RAM and HDD. The RAM upgrades are pretty cheap at the moment. You can get 8GB for about $50 if you look in the right places. I would upgrade now if you know you are going to upgrade in the future, because I don't think it will get any lower than that.
Hard drive prices are just about as they always are.

I have a 2010, 13" MacBook Pro (2.4Ghz Core 2 Duo, 4GB RAM, 320M) and I have no doubt that my computer will last me for the next four years, especially with the uses that you do (I use my computer similarly).

Oh, I thought you were talking about the baseline MacBook Pro 13", 2.3Ghz i5.
 
I noticed how the MPB is sold with the SATA HDD and to get a SSD HDD with 256GB is $650 extra.
So how hard and expensive is it to do this from scratch and 3rd-party companies instead of going through Apple to have it set up?
 
MrJSmith said:
I noticed how the MPB is sold with the SATA HDD and to get a SSD HDD with 256GB is $650 extra.
So how hard and expensive is it to do this from scratch and 3rd-party companies instead of going through Apple to have it set up?
Click to expand...

an aftermarket ssd is much cheaper, around $200 for a 120gb or around $400 for a 256gb, it varies depending on the brand and what not.
 
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