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MBP 13'' + SSD reccomendations

A

aoaaron

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 4, 2010
468
44
I'm about to buy a 13'' today.
I'm going to be surfing the web, watching 'HD video' (i.e. 720p/1080p anime which i download) and looking at PDFs.

I am also now interested in buying a SSD after reading lots and lots of your comments. So I have a few questions:

1) Can the 13'' play the animes etc. I download and watch? I presuming yes since some netbooks I was going to buy boasted being able to handle them

2) Shall I get the SSD from apple or shall I buy one separatley? If so, which is the best and most affordable option? I live in the UK so any UK links would be awesome. I was going to buy an external harddrive anyway, so instead I can case the harddrive apple give me and install an SSD.

FYI, this laptop will only be used to really store music and some videos. I have a 1TB gaming PC at home which will be used to store everything etc; my MBP will only be used for viewing photos, surfing the web, watching anime/movies, PDF+word documents (work).

Thanks for all your help, I appreciate it. :)
 
thanks. is that SSD reccomendation the definitive answer?

also 1080p downloads because i download 1080p to my desktop.
 
You can play 1080 videos, you just won't see 1080p unless you hook it up to an external monitor.
The vertex 2s as the above poster recommended are indeed very fast. Don't buy the SSD from apple unless you want to overpay....oh the irony.
 
1) Can the 13'' play the animes etc. I download and watch? I presuming yes since some netbooks I was going to buy boasted being able to handle them- there is very little advantage to 1080p on a 13" screen, you could watch it in 720 p and have a better picture then most 1080p televisions, the only time it becomes a huge asset is when you get big, like 40" tvs and such. But as for your question yes you can. and 720 p is a smaller file size which = more shows on the hd.

2) Shall I get the SSD from apple or shall I buy one separatley? If so, which is the best and most affordable option? I live in the UK so any UK links would be awesome. I was going to buy an external harddrive anyway, so instead I can case the harddrive apple give me and install an SSD. I am not recommending you buy the SSD from apple, its not so much the pricing from apple its the pricing of SSD's today, they are obnoxiously expensive, you should upgrade it to the 500 GB HDD. You will have no issues and it is fairly quick, give it 8-12 months and you will notice a massive price drop, and pick up a 256 GB SSD for like 1/4 of there current price tag.

FYI, this laptop will only be used to really store music and some videos. I have a 1TB gaming PC at home which will be used to store everything etc; my MBP will only be used for viewing photos, surfing the web, watching anime/movies, PDF+word documents (work). The 13" mbp is an amazing machine, for its size and quality the performance is top notch, i had a 13" macbook for 4 years and i loved it, it did lot of HD movie editing in 1080p 30fps and 720p 60 fps, and it was just a trooper. i did all of that with a 160 GB 5400 HDD and it worked very well, but it was just small, photos and music take up alot of space when you have over 17k photos and 4 k songs, and i refuse to not have my libraries on me at all times os i can view share and upload more =D

let me know if you have any other questions
 
I bought an OWC Mercury Extreme Pro SSD. 120 Gb. Unless you need a big storage on the go, it has plenty of room, at least to me. And, believe me, it makes a huge difference in terms of speediness for everything, from startup to shutdown, open and close programs.
Completely happy so far.
 
aoaaron said:
i can wait for sure. why? i asked around and people said next big mac release will be next april most probably or february. :(
Click to expand...

The longest time between refreshes was 10 months and 10 months from April would be February, Sandy Bridge is being introduced in Q4 2010 and chips in Q1 2011 so February is reasonable for MacBook Pro updates. The integrated on Sandy Bridge supports 1080p :D

Of course the MacBook Pro 13" is a peppy machine and will still be useful three years from now (but IMO architecture updates are best to upgrade on)
 
green86 said:
Yea I don't think he knows what he's talking about. Buy it now. No reason to wait.
Click to expand...

he does know. the current macbooks while they will be handle the stuf u asked about very well. they still use core 2 duos which are now outdated due to the advent of core i series processors. in a a few months, a new set of intel processors code named sandy bridge will come out and be even faster than the current core i series. only the 13" macbooks though. the 15 and 17" have the core i series in them.
 
wywern209 said:
he does know. the current macbooks while they will be handle the stuf u asked about very well. they still use core 2 duos which are now outdated due to the advent of core i series processors. in a a few months, a new set of intel processors code named sandy bridge will come out and be even faster than the current core i series. only the 13" macbooks though. the 15 and 17" have the core i series in them.
Click to expand...

Um, They won't be introduced in 3 months, thats for sure. The current model is 4 months old, which is still the first half of it's sale life. Sandy Bridge will be faster but it will only be evolutionary. It won't be as big as the jump from the C2D to the iX.
 
CaoCao said:
The longest time between refreshes was 10 months and 10 months from April would be February, Sandy Bridge is being introduced in Q4 2010 and chips in Q1 2011 so February is reasonable for MacBook Pro updates. The integrated on Sandy Bridge supports 1080p :D

Of course the MacBook Pro 13" is a peppy machine and will still be useful three years from now (but IMO architecture updates are best to upgrade on)
Click to expand...

The current 13" MacBook handles 1080p just fine.
 
wywern209 said:
he does know. the current macbooks while they will be handle the stuf u asked about very well. they still use core 2 duos which are now outdated due to the advent of core i series processors. in a a few months, a new set of intel processors code named sandy bridge will come out and be even faster than the current core i series. only the 13" macbooks though. the 15 and 17" have the core i series in them.
Click to expand...

MBPs were updated 5 months ago, the regular time between updates is 8-10 months so I doubt we'll see anything before 2011. C2D is more than sufficient for OP
 
also, don't MBPS hold their resale value? say i wanted to sell my MBP for a 200 dollar loss to upgrade, is that possible? (this is say a couple of months down the line when the new line is released?) if so hwos best to do it?
 
On the SSD front, I bought one of those that was in the ebuyer link a few months back from Scan and absolutely love it. Performance is great and no slow downs so far. Did set me back £60 more than the one in the link though :(
 
aoaaron said:
also, don't MBPS hold their resale value? say i wanted to sell my MBP for a 200 dollar loss to upgrade, is that possible? (this is say a couple of months down the line when the new line is released?) if so hwos best to do it?
Click to expand...

They do. I'm not sure how much it will depreciate, but I'm considering doing that too if the new models are worth it. I guess I'd sell mine on eBay.
 
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