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most bang for your buck... opinions?

O

ofmossandmoose

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 8, 2007
12
0
I have never had the pleasure of owning an apple laptop but i put away alot of money and decided that i would finally own a macbook pro. I will be using it mostly for music creation (alot of it using ableton live and doing live sound manipulation) and sometimes film editing or animation. I was planning on getting the mid range pro model, but after the updates all the specs seem way closer making my decision tough. Whats the most bang for the buck?


Should I:


A) stick with my orginal plan and get the mid range pro
B)get the lower end pro and maybe give it more after market ram, better hard drive and stuff with my saved money
C) get the one of the regular macbooks and beef it up with the moeny saved
D)get a referb of the pro and deck it out?
 
Hi there,

I was more or less in the same boat. I had a dead 5 year old Powerbook, and I just bought the low-end new MBP. Ableton is the most complicated software I use, and I'm utterly confident that the lower cache and proc speed of the $1999 MBP will be more than enough. I ordered it with the 7200rpm HD, and I will be getting more RAM. $500 more for the mid-range is just not worth it, given you're a music rather than graphics person. Spend the money on Applecare, on a good case, and on some fun midi accessories!
 
In terms of bang for the buck, the 2.4GHz MB is the best right now. It is $700 cheaper than the low-end MBP, and the only real downsides are the smaller screen and lack of dedicated graphics (I don't know if that's important for the animation you do). With the $700 you can get more RAM (don't pay the BTO price--install it yourself), a bigger drive, and a nice big LCD and probably still have money left.
 
m85476585 said:
In terms of bang for the buck, the 2.4GHz MB is the best right now. It is $700 cheaper than the low-end MBP, and the only real downsides are the smaller screen and lack of dedicated graphics (I don't know if that's important for the animation you do). With the $700 you can get more RAM (don't pay the BTO price--install it yourself), a bigger drive, and a nice big LCD and probably still have money left.
Click to expand...

The low end MBP is the hands down winner! That's what I keep telling myself, having gone with it instead the 2.5Ghz phoney bologna :)
 
B)get the lower end pro and maybe give it more after market ram, better hard drive and stuff with my saved money

I would go with getting the entry level new MBP. It is a wonderful machine. The other models have specific clients in mind, like those individuals who need more dedicated graphics memory or a larger screen ect.

The difference between the 1999 and the 2499 are not that great in my opinion to justify the 500 dollar price difference.
 
yup - i wanted the midrange model, but i already know i'm paying a big markup when I buy apple products, i don't feel like TOTALLY bending over for the 2.5k version haha.

So i bought the low-end version, ordered 4 gigs of RAM, and upped the hard drive to the 200gb 7200rpm version!
 
getting 2.6 is a waste...so my logic was get something in between, so I ordered 2.5 with 512vram (minimum I consider whats needed today so the thing lasts you for some time) and 7200rpm HD and 4gb (Crucial from newegg 70$). Getting the lower end model 2.4 with 256 vram wasnt worth it to me, because then you might as well get a really nice refurb and trick it out and you will have money left over.
 
i think i made my decision

ok i think i'm going to get the base level pro... in case i need dedicated graphics. I will be upgrading to the 7200 rpm HD, the price is so little that i can sell it later if need be... i'll also be upping the ram to 4gb prolly from new egg or owc...

does anyone think its still a better idea to upgrade with a thrid party HD as i cannot find anything comprable is performance/price as the apple option...

other thing... should i go for a referb and upgrade the hard drive? When do you think the new mbp's would end up selling as used?
 
what are the benefits to having a 7200rpm hdd over the 5400rpm? Is it simply the speed at which files are written and retrieved?

Thanks
 
well if you do some searching

there are some great discussions going on right now about the two... what i have come up with is that for large files and heavy processing the 7200 wins, but for smaller operations and everyday performance the difference is little in fact the 5400 might in some cases be a bit faster.

The issue i guess is whether you'd rather have the power boost when you probably would notice and deal with the slight speed dip that you in normal operations that you probably wouldn't even notice...

... is this right? This is my understanding of the pros and cons...
 
I would suggest NOT putting in an aftermarket HD right now. It'll void your warranty, and I had a tremendous screw up that wrecked my whole computer when I tried to change my DVD drive on my old Powerbook (same procedure, more or less)
 
Low end for sure.

You won't see much of a difference between the low and medium machines - IMO, its not worth the $500 price difference.

Maxed out RAM will do more for you than .1Ghz.

If your doing heavy graphic work then you'll benefit from the 512MB GPU RAM.
 
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