I'm looking for a macbook pro. I plan on taking IT classes and computer sciences in college. I'm just wondering for any of you out there who have done this, what level of power am I going to be needing in a macbook pro for this kind of schooling.
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IT work
- Thread starter baxingo
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Well thats the plan, i just wanna know weather I'm gonna want an i5 or an i7 or more ram ect.. I don't need a 17, thats to big. And I don't really want a 13"
I have a 2008 15" MBP (2.4 GHz C2D, Nvidia GeForce 8600M GT 256 MB, 4 GB Ram, 200 GB HD) and it runs Xcode very well on OS X. Beyond that I have used bootcamp with Windows Vista and Windows 7. Both ran very well. I used several different IDE's on Windows as well (Eclipse, Visual Studio 2010, etc.) and all of them performed very well. No problems with freezing or long compile times.
The current 13" is similar to my specs of my MBP from a few years ago. I would stick with a MBP for other performance reasons but I am sure a MacBook/MacBook Air would handle Xcode and other IDE's too.
If you are not going to be hooking up to an external LCD monitor I would strongly recommend the 15". Xcode and other IDE's feel cramped on the 13".
The current 13" is similar to my specs of my MBP from a few years ago. I would stick with a MBP for other performance reasons but I am sure a MacBook/MacBook Air would handle Xcode and other IDE's too.
If you are not going to be hooking up to an external LCD monitor I would strongly recommend the 15". Xcode and other IDE's feel cramped on the 13".
Thanks, I'm probably gonna go with the base 15" i5 with the high res screen, and maybe an aftermarket ssd eventually.
'IT' courses as in programming or as in network support?
I use a 15" MBP for work (all network related) and it's great. Get a ram upgrade from macsales to bring it up to 8 gig so you can have numerous virtual machines running on top of the os and there's really not much you can't simulate/emulate/troubleshoot all on one box...
I use a 15" MBP for work (all network related) and it's great. Get a ram upgrade from macsales to bring it up to 8 gig so you can have numerous virtual machines running on top of the os and there's really not much you can't simulate/emulate/troubleshoot all on one box...
Yeah, more networking and support, but a bit of programming aswell. And could you possible recommend some good aftermarket ram to get 8gb, i don't wanna buy something cheap and have it break. I don't really want to spend $400 on apples ram. I am waiting for the 2011 mbp's so maybe the 8gb will be cheap enough to not worry about it.
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You can buy any base Mac and have more power than you will need. Any of them will do the trick. I attend a tech school and am enrolled in Computer Science classes, netbooks are sufficient for the operations you will see. You may want the upgraded model when it comes to processor and GPU for personal use, but you will NOT need to spend on RAM of HDD from the factory. Absolutely, install those things down the road...
Good luck,
Good luck,
+1
I was able to do 3 of my 4 years of college using Bootcamp/Vmware Fusion-though I had a old dell laptop for when I REALLY needed it.
If I had 3k burning a hole in my pocket I would get a new MBP with 8GB of RAM-I am going to wait untill the sandy bridge laptops come out
I've got a netbook currently, but I can't stand it, so I think just a base 15 will be good, because i'll be doing schooling on it, and it will be my main computer for the next few years.
I hear ya, I had a Dell Mini 9 hackintosh for a little while last year, and it got old pretty quick. You'll enjoy the 15, that's a good choice. I was just trying to emphasize that you need nothing special for the type of school work you will be involved in.
honestly any old mac is great for IT. The only thing I dont like about MBPs for IT is the utter lack of link light! Sure I can check connectivity in the network prefs or from the menu bar. But dang I want link light!
I second (or third or fourth) the reccomendation to get the full 8gb for you machine regardless of which model. You will appreciate running VMs much better when they arent starved for ram.
Also, last time I was at Apple I saw their own IT staff using everything from 13" uMBPs to 17" pre unibody MBPs. You can code, script etc on anything reasonable.
I myself was only driven to get a new MBP when it became apparent that my 1st gen intel Mac mini (which tops out at 2gb) was inadequate for VMs. Well that and my beat up old PC laptop is pretty useless since the keys started dying!
I second (or third or fourth) the reccomendation to get the full 8gb for you machine regardless of which model. You will appreciate running VMs much better when they arent starved for ram.
Also, last time I was at Apple I saw their own IT staff using everything from 13" uMBPs to 17" pre unibody MBPs. You can code, script etc on anything reasonable.
I myself was only driven to get a new MBP when it became apparent that my 1st gen intel Mac mini (which tops out at 2gb) was inadequate for VMs. Well that and my beat up old PC laptop is pretty useless since the keys started dying!
Apple wants to avoid having a light show on their pretty laptops like some other companies' machine have
If you take the computer home and it is on in the room you sleep in, you don't want those lights. I have used electrical tape and 'blockades' on numerous occasions as I could not sleep due to a small electrical storm being created in my bedroom.
Also, iStat Pro will show you whatever you need to know when configured.
Also, iStat Pro will show you whatever you need to know when configured.
Well yeah there is that. Heck for the money I am much happier as an IT guy having the network abilities of my MBP. I would have to be running Windows Server to do the same things a regular mac can do. But sometimes when you are doing basic troubleshooting you need to know that you are getting link. OSI model and all that. Especially when you are going thru a patch panel trying to figure out WTF is going on!
I work in IT but as a consultant so I ended up choosing the new 13" MBP. Size and weight were an issue for me since I spend all day running from client to client often on foot when clients downtown are close enough. The air was just too underpowered and just seems too fragile for my level of activity. The 15" is the one I would choose if I didn't have to be so mobile though. Any of them are good choices though, nothing freaks out a client running nothing but windows servers and a linux mail server than to show up armed with nothing but a Mac. I've ended up converting many clients after they have seen bootcamp in action or watched my running parallels.
LOL, clients converted after seeing me administering their boxes with MacOSX alone ; )
OT but when you guys do your IT work... what kind of applications do you run on the mac? do you always have your virtual machine started up? and use windows to troubleshoot problems?
The mac is pretty informative about the network its on either by using the regular network prefs panel or the network utility which has all kinds of neat functions like a port scanner. Also there is a lot of cool stuff you can do from the command line. Not better than win, different. But it is Unix after all, which is pretty much what the internet was founded on. So yes for networking it is good in that way. It also has PHP and Apache already installed so there is that. I do still jump on a Windows VM to talk to AD or Exchange or other MS enterprise things. So thats not so much an app on windows as it is using Win XP or Win7 to connect to win Server 2003 or 2008. Also Visio and Excel on the Win side.
Most problems I toubleshoot with network utility.