Macbook pro purchase advice

[rchip]

Hey guys! As soon as the macbook air was refreshed, I went and bought a 13 inch model. Unfortunately I went through 4 machines and they all had faults so I got a refund from the Apple store in the end as I was tired of exchanging : (

I've been thinking about a macbook pro, really the only things I will be doing are Pages, Keynote, numbers, aperture 3 and browsing/streaming. I've been considering pulling the trigger on this refurb mac

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/APPLE-MAC...cessories_LaptopBatteries&hash=item1e6603098a

Seeing as I'm new to macs (the air was my first mac) I was wondering if this would be good for my needs?

at £650 it's a good price for me so I wont be so worried about taking it around university, my only concern is would the machine struggle to stream hd video?

Please let me know what you think anyway, I would appreciate your help!

Rich

 

[Tiki35]

I have the same machine and it would serve your needs well. Very inexpensive to upgrade to 8GB of RAM and you can easily swap the hard drive for an SSD later if you like also.

 

[randomrazr]

Hey guys! As soon as the macbook air was refreshed, I went and bought a 13 inch model. Unfortunately I went through 4 machines and they all had faults so I got a refund from the Apple store in the end as I was tired of exchanging : (

I've been thinking about a macbook pro, really the only things I will be doing are Pages, Keynote, numbers, aperture 3 and browsing/streaming. I've been considering pulling the trigger on this refurb mac

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/APPLE-MAC...cessories_LaptopBatteries&hash=item1e6603098a

Seeing as I'm new to macs (the air was my first mac) I was wondering if this would be good for my needs?

at £650 it's a good price for me so I wont be so worried about taking it around university, my only concern is would the machine struggle to stream hd video?

Please let me know what you think anyway, I would appreciate your help!

Rich

u exchanged ur thing 4 times? what were wrong with them?

 

[wegster]

That's a core 2 duo machine, not an i5 or i7, so it will be a fair bit slower than current pro models. It's about as fast CPU-wise as a 2010 13" fastest Air, about half as fast as the current gen fastest Air or entry level current 13" Pro, ~1/3rd cpu power of the current entry level quad core MBP 15".
This is the model you're looking at:
http://www.everymac.com/systems/app...3-mid-2009-sd-firewire-800-unibody-specs.html

I believe it's also integrated graphics, but will take up to 8GB of RAM.
Overall, I'd personally pass on that, and look at a newer generation i5/i7 13" or 15"

 

[416049]

Hey guys! As soon as the macbook air was refreshed, I went and bought a 13 inch model. Unfortunately I went through 4 machines and they all had faults so I got a refund from the Apple store in the end as I was tired of exchanging : (

I've been thinking about a macbook pro, really the only things I will be doing are Pages, Keynote, numbers, aperture 3 and browsing/streaming. I've been considering pulling the trigger on this refurb mac

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/APPLE-MAC...cessories_LaptopBatteries&hash=item1e6603098a

Seeing as I'm new to macs (the air was my first mac) I was wondering if this would be good for my needs?

at £650 it's a good price for me so I wont be so worried about taking it around university, my only concern is would the machine struggle to stream hd video?

Please let me know what you think anyway, I would appreciate your help!

Rich

I don't think it would struggle with any of your needs and hd video streaming would be fine too,however i am wondering if you would not need the screen size and have a bit more money in your budget to look at the 13MBP.

As for University security you could use:

Prey

http://preyproject.com/

Undercover

www.undercover.com

or a kingston lock: http://www.amazon.de/Kensington-64020-MicroSaver-Notebook-Lock/dp/B00006B8NO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1313174544&sr=8-1

 

[rchip]

u exchanged ur thing 4 times? what were wrong with them?

3 of them had buzzing speakers : ( ... one of them had working speakers but an unaccetable grey gradient at the bottom of the screen!

Thanks for the pointers there, okay so it seems that this will be fine for my needs but I may as well go with the new macbook pro.

That would be £859 with education discount, would you say that probably makes more sense than the £650 refurb?

 

[h00ligan]

3 of them had buzzing speakers : ( ... one of them had working speakers but an unaccetable grey gradient at the bottom of the screen!

Thanks for the pointers there, okay so it seems that this will be fine for my needs but I may as well go with the new macbook pro.

That would be £859 with education discount, would you say that probably makes more sense than the £650 refurb?

Neither of those are faults. FWIW. You'll find something to hate about the mbp too.

 

[wegster]

3 of them had buzzing speakers : ( ... one of them had working speakers but an unaccetable grey gradient at the bottom of the screen!

Thanks for the pointers there, okay so it seems that this will be fine for my needs but I may as well go with the new macbook pro.

That would be £859 with education discount, would you say that probably makes more sense than the £650 refurb?

That's the big question - for the $ (well ok, £ ) being asked, I'd pick up the base current MBP refurb, or one year back (but still dual core i-series cpu).. as others mentioned, I do think that system would suffice, but for a few $ more, you'll see a pretty good jump in performance.

 

[randomrazr]

3 of them had buzzing speakers : ( ... one of them had working speakers but an unaccetable grey gradient at the bottom of the screen!

Thanks for the pointers there, okay so it seems that this will be fine for my needs but I may as well go with the new macbook pro.

That would be £859 with education discount, would you say that probably makes more sense than the £650 refurb?

and the fourth one?

 

[rchip]

and the fourth one?

Sorry I didn't write that very clearly, three of the four macbook airs had the speaker issue, one of the four had a screen issue

I'm not sure if I should try an air again or just get a pro to avoid these headaches about quality!

 

[njean777]

Sorry I didn't write that very clearly, three of the four macbook airs had the speaker issue, one of the four had a screen issue

I'm not sure if I should try an air again or just get a pro to avoid these headaches about quality!

Just get a pro, If you really didn't like the speakers on the air then don't buy another one. TBH you should probably just get a pro from the apple store, and open it before you leave to save the gas.

 

[mofunk]

Get a refurb from the Apple store.