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is the 300 dollar difference between 13" i5 and i7 worth it?
- Thread starter spacewhalezo
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That depends. Could you link the two laptops you're trying to decide between? I could give you a better answer.
Generally, if you are intending to keep the machine for say 2 years, and then resell it, the higher specs will make your resale value higher, by (based on my local experience) 50-100 /$.
If this is your plan, you only need to justify a difference of 200-300 $
Otherwise, it's really a question of how bad your nerves are/how impatient you are. The i5 will run anything the i7 runs, just slightly slower (and in anything except extreme cases you won't note the difference). Usually the human is the bottleneck.
RGDS,
Generally, if you are intending to keep the machine for say 2 years, and then resell it, the higher specs will make your resale value higher, by (based on my local experience) 50-100 /$.
If this is your plan, you only need to justify a difference of 200-300 $
Otherwise, it's really a question of how bad your nerves are/how impatient you are. The i5 will run anything the i7 runs, just slightly slower (and in anything except extreme cases you won't note the difference). Usually the human is the bottleneck.
RGDS,
However, if the view is toward maximum resale recovery in percentage terms, the lower end machine is better. 3 years from now no one will care whether it has a Core i5 or Core i7 Ivy Bridge. The important thing is that it has an Ivy Bridge dual core processor when mainstream notebooks will have quad-core Skymont processors.
Generally a base model is the best in terms of overall cost (factoring in resale). One possible exception is when a base model is deliberately crippled in an upsell attempt (e.g. 2011 MacBook Air with 2GB of non-upgradable RAM when everything else in the lineup had 4GB).
I don't think it's worth it. $300 is a lot for a minor speed bump (that you'd probably never notice and won't extend the life of the laptop at all), double the RAM (that you can upgrade yourself for cheap) and a bigger HD (that still isn't an SSD).
I'd get the base model and use the money you'd save for an SSD and maybe 8GB RAM.
I disagree (not with your statement, but your "priority" of SSD over CPU). If he's talking about a normal MBP and NOT a rMBP, then he should put CPU as a higher priority than SSD. This is because he can *always* add/upgrade to an SSD down the road, but he can NEVER upgrade his CPU down the road.