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Why? So this sp33d fr3@k can sit around and twittle his thumbs while the world passes him by? I don't think so :D

OP, since you have cash to burn (a good thing when considering Apple anything) , ditch the x25-m. Take out the superdrive and put it in an external enclosure. Replace that with the 500 gb 5200 rpm drive (or any other 7200 rpm drive) for media, then get the x25-E 64Gb.

If you want extreme extreme outrageousness, take out the superdrive as stated earlier, but get two x25-m's or x25-e's in a raid 0 config with a decent backup schema.

How is a 7,200 rpm drive really slow?? :confused: Honestly, if he's just gonna use this for simple college papers and web browsing and some light gaming, I just don't see why an SSD is needed considering the cost? I know he has the money for it and I also know that SSD is probably the way of the future in terms of speed. Maybe it's just me considering I use a lot of storage for my media :) and an SSD isn't high enough in terms of capacity.
 
hahaha,

just see this spec
http://yit.me/wkybc3

with standar configuration it will easily beat macbookpro

LMAO not only is that thing hideously designed it also weighs 11.68 pounds. **** man that's massive. Almost double the weight of the macbook. Also much bigger all around. Piece of **** alienware is just a Dell with a different logo and higher price tag.
 
How is a 7,200 rpm drive really slow?? :confused: Honestly, if he's just gonna use this for simple college papers and web browsing and some light gaming, I just don't see why an SSD is needed considering the cost? I know he has the money for it and I also know that SSD is probably the way of the future in terms of speed. Maybe it's just me considering I use a lot of storage for my media :) and an SSD isn't high enough in terms of capacity.

It doesn't matter what this guy is doing, but how much. Yeah, he isn't doing high end visualizations on photoshop or HD video renders (are you op?) , but with an ssd like the x25-m, and even most top of the line SSD's will be faster than their 5.2k, 7.2k, 10k, and 15k rotational counterparts in pretty much everything, with a very noticable boost in responsiveness (of course you can't actually put 10k and 15k disks in a laptop environment for heat issues). We can sit here and argue the validity of the increased boot and app launch times but when you use a machine for work/school/play as much as I do any speed increase is appreciated, else i'd just buy some stupid celeron machine pimping vista with 512 megs of ram and a 4200 rpm disk.

Sure their is an early adopter tax, but who wouldn't make the upgrade to increase durability, battery life, and speed as well as decreased heat and battery consumption. Sounds like the ultimate upgrade to me.

He's already prepared on spending a boat load of cash on a 320 gb ssd anyway. how much media do you store and use on the go?
 
Spend half the $4k and upgrade more frequently.

The 17" MBP is going to be slow next to anything in 3 years.

Agreed. In 3 years, you could probably get an:

-8-core 3 GHz Intel Quick-Path Interconnect processor
-1024 MB 6.0 Gb/s SSD
-16 Gigs/2132 MHz RAM
-1.5 GB nVidia GeForce 3094587235 GPU


for this much give/take a couple hundred.

The 2.8 GHz is more than enough for you. Please don't spend $300 for a couple MHz. It makes me quiver when $$ goes just like that... So, OP, concentrate more on upgrading the HD and possibly the memory in the future, not the CPU. I beg you! :(

This is solely my opinion. Since you should control your own life, there's no pressure, alright?:)
 
Yeah, this kinda caught me off guard. Get 8GB of RAM (aftermarket for monetary reasons.) And the SSD will blow a 7200 out of the water, so it is the way to go. I'm getting an SSD this winter for my MBP.
 
You may want to consider the 13 or 15" MBP. Not because of the price, but because of the portability. Even though the 17" display is awesome, it will be too big for you to carry to class and use it in class on tiny desks. If I had your budget I would get the 15" MBP and an external display.
 
2.4Ghz with 3mb cache...

That is the same speed as the lowend macbook pro, 18 months ago...

Heck, my 26 month old MPB has a 2,2GHz with 4 mb cache.. and that was the lowend model back then aswell..

The 3.06Ghz with 6 mb cache will smoke it!
 
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