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maclover12

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 13, 2012
18
0
I am a high school student and was wondering if a the retina is more than I need. So should I just get the macbook pro without retina?
 
I am a high school student and was wondering if a the retina is more than I need. So should I just get the macbook pro without retina?

What do you plan to do with it? For most high school students, a macbook pro would be more than they need.
 
As of now, only YOU know what you need.
If you want proper support in helping you finding a decision on what model to buy, you have to tell us your computational needs.

If not, go with what you can afford.
 
For high school the MBA is more than enough to meet your needs.

Pretty much this. Even for college students, unless you can think of a reason you need more processing power, you probably don't need it.
 
sorry didnt think about that I plan to word/pages safari and probably run windows on it to and little bits of gaming
 
Flash games or Diablo 3? It makes a difference. The Air can handle most things to be honest, very well even, but I found real gaming to be a bit of a warm proposition (with settings on pretty low).

They are both great machines, but I bought my Pro specifically because I started doing some real gaming again and needed the extra power.

EDIT: That being said, the MBA comes with an SSD, as does the rMBP, and once you go SSD, you will want nothing else.
 
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Flash games or Diablo 3? It makes a difference. The Air can handle most things to be honest, very well even, but I found real gaming to be a bit of a warm proposition (with settings on pretty low).

They are both great machines, but I bought my Pro specifically because I started doing some real gaming again and needed the extra power.

EDIT: That being said, the MBA comes with an SSD, as does the rMBP, and once you go SSD, you will want nothing else.[/QUOTE

See I don't know I might because I never had a really good computer and if you did get the retina would you get the base model??
 
If you upgrade the regular Mbp to be comparable to the specs of the rmbp the regular actually cost more. The only real diff is that you have more space on the Mbp as opposed to the rmbp, however, the rmbp being all SSD is a lot faster, plus you get retina which is stunning I just ordered rmbp baseline with ram upgraded to 16gb.
 
It boggles my mind why some people would jump to the conclusion just because someone is young or in high school, they would need a less powerful Mac. Kids these days need a ton of GPU power. They know the ins and outs of gaming more than old geezers. And no, please don't start with the old: If you game, don't buy a Mac BS. Just help the kid out.

So I'd go with the advise: Buy what you can afford. For a student, sometimes money can be tight so the affordable cMBP is wise and just do 3rd party upgrades of RAM, SSD and Optibay whenever your resources can handle sometime down the road. If you can afford the MBPR, go for it. Heck, if you're a rich kid, go for the 512gb. Windows 7 partitions and game saves eat a lot of space. Now if you don't game much, go Air. You don't need to drag around a heavy backpack will all those books. And the new Ivy Bridge Air is powerful enough for a lot of regular work loads for a cheaper OSX experience.
 
Flash games or Diablo 3? It makes a difference. The Air can handle most things to be honest, very well even, but I found real gaming to be a bit of a warm proposition (with settings on pretty low).

They are both great machines, but I bought my Pro specifically because I started doing some real gaming again and needed the extra power.

EDIT: That being said, the MBA comes with an SSD, as does the rMBP, and once you go SSD, you will want nothing else.[/QUOTE

See I don't know I might because I never had a really good computer and if you did get the retina would you get the base model??

you mix something that you need and something that you want. From your comments, you tend to buy the retina, then buy one. Which part is confusing? :confused:
 
A Macbook or any Apple product is a high end computing device with premium features. It's very hard to quantify one's purchasing decision as being "need" based rather than just "want" based.

The best bet is to buy the most expensive machine you can reasonably afford. I don't mean take out a loan to buy a laptop, I mean if you have $2600 allocated for the purchase of a laptop you should probably just spend that much.
 
When I was in the 8th grade I had a PowerMac 9500/120 and a PowerBook 5300cs...

I say, go for it all, if you can....

And by the way, don't listen to these folks trying to tell you what your "needs" are -- I wanted something that could handle graphics and video, that would future-proof me, I kept that machine from 1995-1999 before I upgraded to a PowerMac G3. The PowerMac 9500 was also a great machine for the Internet and I used it with a cable modem in 1997 (yes), even running a server off that machine.

My PowerBook was top-of-the-line too at the time, I later upgraded the panel to an active-matrix display -- It was very capable at the time and handled Internet and AppleWorks as well as some basic games. Of course, this was before super-3D gaming and Flash video/YouTube even existed.

But, I say, if you (or your parents) will let you, get what machine you want. The best way to look at it, is whatever you get -- you are "future-proofing" yourself and getting a machine that will last you for a few years and still be capable in 2015.
 
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When I was in the 8th grade I had a PowerMac 9500/120 and a PowerBook 5300cs...

I say, go for it all, if you can....

And by the way, don't listen to these folks trying to tell you what your "needs" are -- I wanted something that could handle graphics and video, that would future-proof me, I kept that machine from 1995-1999 before I upgraded to a PowerMac G3. The PowerMac 9500 was also a great machine for the Internet and I used it with a cable modem in 1997 (yes), even running a server off that machine.

My PowerBook was top-of-the-line too at the time, I later upgraded the panel to an active-matrix display -- It was very capable at the time and handled Internet and AppleWorks as well as some basic games. Of course, this was before super-3D gaming and Flash video/YouTube even existed.

But, I say, if you (or your parents) will let you, get what machine you want. The best way to look at it, is whatever you get -- you are "future-proofing" yourself and getting a machine that will last you for a few years and still be capable in 2015.

If I get the one with 2.3 do you think it will be capable for 2015 are would you just get the 2.6?
 
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