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Migrating from iMac to MacBook Pro - advice needed!

S

stikeymo

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 5, 2007
6
0
Hello!

I'm shortly gong to be moving from the UK to California, and as such I'm looking to downsize my Mac setup - I can't be bothered moving my '07 24" iMac over with me.

I'm currently mulling over what to replace it with. I'm currently stuck choosing between a 13" and a 15" Macbook Pro.

My current machine spec is:

* 2.8ghz Core 2 Duo Extreme
* 4GB RAM
* 500GB HDD
* ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO (256MB)

And it's starting to creak a little bit. I use it for a mixture of photography stuff (Lightroom and occasionally Photoshop), music (Logic) and some light gaming (TF2, L4D/L4D2, etc) along with some software development.

So...I'm thinking either:

* 13" MacBook Pro 2.7GHz dual-core Intel Core i7
* 15" MacBook Pro 2.0GHz quad-core Intel Core i7

Both with minimal RAM/HDD space - I'll upgrade to 8GB RAM and stick in a beefy HDD/SSD drive myself - presuming this is doable - are Apple soldering either of these components to the motherboard yet?

Does the graphics card in the 13" MBP suck big time?

And what about the top of the line 15" MBP - is it really worth $400 for 0.2GHz CPU boost and the better graphics card?

Thanks!! :)
 
The 13" screen is rather small to be doing real work on. If you plan on getting an external monitor then either mbp would be fine. Otherwise the extra screen size of the 15" will make a huge difference.
 
Apple won't solder any components to the motherboard apart from the processors (though they aren't doing this anymore). It isn't worth the time and the effort when they can simply make them difficult to get to through designing it that way in the first place. However, upgrading the hard drive is extremely easy. See here: http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Install...body-Early-2011-Hard-Drive-Replacement/5895/1

As for which system to buy, I'd go with the 15. The 13 really is too small.
 
Awesome, thanks for the info! I'll eventually get a bigger screen and/or a projector for it, but for the short-medium term I'll solely be working on the MacBook's screen, so 15" definitely does make sense. Great to know that RAM/HDD upgrades are still do-able.

What do people think about the difference between the 2.2ghz and 2.0ghz i7 chips? Although I'm not a big gamer/heavy graphics user, there seems to be a marked difference between the graphics cards - is it worth sinking an extra $400 into the laptop to make it last a little longer in the long haul?
 
15" MBP. It is the sweet spot for power, portability and screen size. I moved from a Desktop PC to a 13" and a 27" iMac combo and sold both the in less than a year for my 15" MBP and never looked back. 13" worked but 15" is so much better. With a 15" I rarely hook up my external monitor unless I am doing serious Photoshop work. Of course everyone is different but a 15" is a sweet spot
 
Get the baseline 15 inch. Getting ANY upgrades from the Apple store is a complete waste of money.

Paying that extra couple hundred for the 2.2 over the 2.0 is a waste as well. Get the baseline, buy the SSD online, and upgrade it yourself. Saves you money (you'll pay the 125 extra for the cheapest but you won't get the standard HD) and you'll have an extra drive to do whatever with. (Use in a bay for Time Machine, for example).
 
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