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Macbook air + iMac or just Macbook Pro

T

timothytaa

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 15, 2012
34
7
I am just wondering which would be better to get. The macbook air plus a iMac or just get a beefed up macbook pro. I have $3,000 to spend so it shouldn't be hard to buy what I want. I am a heavy photoshop user so I would get the package with the machine(s). Right now I just have photoshop but would need the package. And I would like to play games on it like WoW, SC2, and TF2.

Which should I get?

iMac with quad core i7 21 inch with 8 gbs and 1 tb + 13 inch air with i5 and 128gb ssd.

Or I could go with a macbook pro 15 inch with quad core i7 and 8gbs memory with 256gb ssd plus student edition of adobe suite.

Both of these come out to $3,000 without including tax. I could get an iMac and macbook air for $3,000 but it doesn't include the adobe suite or get a beefed up macbook pro with suite for $3,000.

I am just curious as to what the community thinks about which Mac would be best for me according to my needs. This would be my very first Mac buy also so I am pretty excited!!!
 
I have all 3. My favorite is the MBP and get's most used.

I take my MBA with me for work and pull it out when I need to show a customer some PDF documents or drawing.

My iMac collects dust because I don't like sitting in my office for any periods of time.

Down the road I plan on just having the MBP and a iPad for work, when solid works comes up with a drawing viewer for iPad. But the 11" MBA is still a better iPad, I just wish it had half the battery life of the iPad.

I got the MBP from the refurbished store, early 2011 15" 2.0 $1359

Then I purchased 8 GB of Crucial Ram and a 256 GB SSD for less then $350 total. I had about $1800 into a very nice upgraded MBP, 4 weeks old and 5 battery cycles.

The refurbished store has some great deals.
 
Last edited:
Get a beefed up 15" mbp. They are excellent and with a 200 dollar monitor it is basically an iMac that is portable.
 
Yeah I was thinking about just getting a monitor. The mac monitor is like 900 bucks which is expensive. Are there any good monitors that work well with mac?
 
25-27 inch. I want one that has a history of working well with macs. My friend once got an asus monitor and hooked it up to his mac pro and I did not work properly and kept going in and out.
 
Any monitor will work, I had a similar dilemma because I wanted more power and ended up going for the early '11 2.2 Quad 15" High res anti glare. I really recommend at least the high res so you get more screen real estate on the move. Then I took the CD drive out and put in another HDD. I reckon once it's plugged into my Dell monitor the iMac really doesn't have much over this setup. External keyboard/mouse etc are hooked up to the monitor's USB hub so it's just plugging in the monitor and USB cable
 
Yeah with that the iMac only has a better screen quality which will only be noticed if you do some serious image editing or video creation.
 
Yeah I'm about to get a monitor for my MVP too. Can u suggest some good monitors 25-27 inch Is it a good idea to buy a 3D led?
 
Hmm I could get 512 gb ssd and upgrade to 16 gb memory and keep 750gb hdd already in the macbook pro for the same price as getting 256gb ssd and getting only 8gb through apple! :).

So there is no one that knows of a monitor that works flawlessly with macbook pro?
 
I have a 15", 17" MBP plus 11" & 13" MBA. Of these four, when working I carry the 15", while traveling the 13" in most cases. At home I have an Apple Thunderbolt display which eliminates the need for a desktop.

If I had to choose just one laptop I'd suggest buying a 15" MBP & a monitor.

It's extremely worthwhile to buy the hi-res version of the MBP, and upgrade it afterwards with 8GB, then when you can, install an SSD. I put one of the new 512GB Samsungs in mine and it's a rocket. A good 25% faster than my MBA's.

You can't go wrong with a MBP, especially the current fully upgradeable models. Rumors suggest that Apple about to kill off the users ability to upgrade their own laptops with the upcoming new models.

Although new MBP's are expected fairly soon, I'm definitely buying the current 15" quad core MBP, so as to not be caught out & forced to buy one that's less upgradable. I can always buy one of those (if it appeals) the second year after it's release and initial debugging.

Much like the 2011 MBA's are better than their first iteration in 2010, years of Apple experience have revealed that Apple always gets it right on the second generation.
 
timothytaa said:
I am just wondering which would be better to get. The macbook air plus a iMac or just get a beefed up macbook pro. I have $3,000 to spend so it shouldn't be hard to buy what I want. I am a heavy photoshop user so I would get the package with the machine(s). Right now I just have photoshop but would need the package. And I would like to play games on it like WoW, SC2, and TF2.
Click to expand...

Gaming sucks a bit on the MBP. Yes, it can run pretty much anything but the fan noise is insane.

If you can deal with that though, it will handle the workload just fine. I was in the same situation a while ago and went for the MBP. I don't regret my decision.

edit:
agree with above re: going hires and aftermarket 8 (or 16 now it is so cheap) gigs. SSD is on my list when 512gb comes down to a reasonable price :D

My 22" samsung monitor (a bit older, but nice as it is also 1680x1050) works just fine with DVI adapter with my MBP...
 
ixodes said:
I have a 15", 17" MBP plus 11" & 13" MBA. Of these four, when working I carry the 15", while traveling the 13" in most cases. At home I have an Apple Thunderbolt display which eliminates the need for a desktop.

If I had to choose just one laptop I'd suggest buying a 15" MBP & a monitor.

It's extremely worthwhile to buy the hi-res version of the MBP, and upgrade it afterwards with 8GB, then when you can, install an SSD. I put one of the new 512GB Samsungs in mine and it's a rocket. A good 25% faster than my MBA's.

You can't go wrong with a MBP, especially the current fully upgradeable models. Rumors suggest that Apple about to kill off the users ability to upgrade their own laptops with the upcoming new models.

Although new MBP's are expected fairly soon, I'm definitely buying the current 15" quad core MBP, so as to not be caught out & forced to buy one that's less upgradable. I can always buy one of those (if it appeals) the second year after it's release and initial debugging.

Much like the 2011 MBA's are better than their first iteration in 2010, years of Apple experience have revealed that Apple always gets it right on the second generation.
Click to expand...

That would be very bad if they made it to where you couldn't upgrade hdd/ssd or memory. I might even think about getting another laptop other than apple's if that happened or I would just get a late 2011 edition.

Maybe the 13in and 15in will be non upgradeable but the 17in will. If that is the case than the obvious laptop to get would be the 17in.
 
Honestly, life is so much easier with 1 computer that IMO it is the only way to go. Get a powerhouse 15 or 17 inch MBP with the better graphics card and CPU and hi res screen, with the cheapest hard drive and 4 GB of RAM. Then buy 16 GB of RAM and a 6.0 Gbps SSD. The performance it will put down is more than sufficient as a desktop replacement and now you not only have all your files on one system, but you can take a high performance computer wherever you need to be.
 
timothytaa said:
Hmm I could get 512 gb ssd and upgrade to 16 gb memory and keep 750gb hdd already in the macbook pro for the same price as getting 256gb ssd and getting only 8gb through apple! :).

So there is no one that knows of a monitor that works flawlessly with macbook pro?
Click to expand...


Buy a 27" Thunderbolt monitor off the Apple Refurb store. While it seems high, when you compare size and resolution to the competition it's really not that out of line.

http://store.apple.com/us/product/FC914LL/A
 
No dilemma :)

I was thinking the same thing myself and I got to this post.

I think I will go for a MacBook Pro 15" with all the power I can afford and will try to buy a Thunderbolt 27" display. That way I will have the best of everything.

This will be my first Mac Computer after 17 years of Windows so the change will be very important for me .

I wrote about this on my blog if you are interested:
http://www.itcentralpoint.com/windows-to-apple-my-switch-after-17-years
 
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