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Macbook Pro or iMac

S

SachaS

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 11, 2009
112
0
Heya guys,

Basically I had a brand spanking new mid 09 MBP and a few weeks back it got nicked from my office.

The insurance people have offered to pay it back, so now I'm in a tight position....

Should I get the same computer (MacBook Pro 2.66) or one of the new iMacs. I use it for general office work, serfing, movies and the like.

I love the MBP but it was a tad slow, so I'm thinking of manually upgrading the hard drive to an SSD.

So which one, MBP 2.66 15.4 inch with an SSD or one of the new iMacs??
 
One is portable. One is not. Figure out if that matters to you or not, and you'll have made your decision.
 
Well of course I like the portability of the MacBook Pro. But I didn't really move it around a lot, though of course in certain situations it could prove useful. However the new iMacs have very impressive specs now compared to the MBP...
 
MBP too slow for your use?

If you only use your MBP for general office work, surfing, movies and the like, I am surprised that you found it slow. Rumor has it that there is an MBP processor upgrade in the pipeline, but I don't think we will see this untill feb 2010 at the earliest.

For your use, I would go for the MBP instead of the iMac. It's much better to be able to watch movies or surf the web anywhere in your livingroom (or elsewhere) than having to sit yourself in front of the desktop iMac.

If you plan to do any video editing, graphics work or audio work, I would definately go for the iMac, just for the size of the screen (and a little because of the faster processor).

I use my 15" G4 PowerBook, 1,5 gHz, 1GB RAM from 2004 everyday. It works like a swiss clock and I love it, even for music production, some Photoshop and light video editing.

Good Luck og your new purchase :)
 
Not to be rude, but the issue IS portability. The usual questions are MacBook versus MacBook Pro or iMac versus Mac Pro, not laptop versus desktop. If performance is your concern, there are plenty of places where benchmarks are published. Neither should be considered significantly upgradable. And portability has its downside (stolen easier).
 
Well it had the issue whereby that annoying beechball would come up occasionally when on the web or doing random, undemanding actions. It was very, very annoying because I had spent a considerable sum on something I thought would be extremely fast and easily handle everyday use, yet for no apparent reason I would be waiting around for a beechball to go away.

So my guess was that the 5400rpm HDD wasn't up the rest of the specs.

The new iMac is tempting because it has a much bigger screen and the specs are much better than when I first bought the MBP. What's the graphics card like in the mid dual core 3.06 like? Considerably better than the 9800 nVidia?
 
SachaS said:
[...new MBP stolen from office...light office work and web-surfing/videos...]

I love the MBP but it was a tad slow, so I'm thinking of manually upgrading the hard drive to an SSD.

So which one, MBP 2.66 15.4 inch with an SSD or one of the new iMacs??
Click to expand...

If you value portability, go with the MBP. The factory upgrade to an SSD isn't uncompetitively priced, unless you want bigger than 128GB (which is what I got in mine). It is the single biggest performance boost you can get.

Spend an extra $30 on a Kensington Lock (or equivalent), and use it.
 
you'll be surprised at how little you'll move around even with a mbp... i suggest the imac, especially if you found the mbp a bit sluggish
signature_SmileyFace.jpg
 
Heya guys,

Thanks for the suggestions.

In the end I settled for the new big iMac with the dedicated graphics card. I reckoned it'll be a better idea to have a desktop Mac to store my movies, music, etc. etc. and to get a nice MBP or MBA in the future to move around with.

Once again thanks,

Sacha S
 
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