Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

My MBP is dead. Replacement?

C

Caezar

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Hi,

I dropped my MacBook Pro yesterday and the screen is smashed.

I am thinking of buying a desktop instead, as I am afraid my daughter would break a new laptop, I rarely bring my notebook outside and I can always use my 12-inch Powerbook, if needed.

I am torn between the $1799 iMac and the $2499 Mac Pro. The iMac is largely sufficient for my needs (surfing, iPhoto, occasional FPS gaming such as COD4, running Excel and Access on Windows), but the Mac Pro is a gorgeous machine.

Reasons why I would prefer the iMac:
- less cable cluttering (integrated speakers and webcam)
- $800 cheaper

Reasons why I would prefer the Mac Pro:
- I could install two hard drives and install Windows 7 on the second, which is cleaner than having to partition the HD on the iMac or having to run Windows in a VM
- I can have up to 4TB of space available, if needed (probably not needed though, unless I keep this desktop for a loooong time)
- The Mac Pro is more upgradable: processor, graphic card, RAM, hard-disks (or am I wrong?)
- I already have a 24-inch Dell Ultrasharp display (If I buy the iMac I would have to leave it in its box, which is a shame 😀)

What do you think?
 
Caezar said:
Hi,

I dropped my MacBook Pro yesterday and the screen is smashed.

I am thinking of buying a desktop instead, as I am afraid my daughter would break a new laptop, I rarely bring my notebook outside and I can always use my 12-inch Powerbook, if needed.

I am torn between the $1799 iMac and the $2499 Mac Pro. The iMac is largely sufficient for my needs (surfing, iPhoto, occasional FPS gaming such as COD4, running Excel and Access on Windows), but the Mac Pro is a gorgeous machine.

Reasons why I would prefer the iMac:
- less cable cluttering (integrated speakers and webcam)
- $800 cheaper

Reasons why I would prefer the Mac Pro:
- I could install two hard drives and install Windows 7 on the second, which is cleaner than having to partition the HD on the iMac or having to run Windows in a VM
- I can have up to 4TB of space available, if needed (probably not needed though, unless I keep this desktop for a loooong time)
- The Mac Pro is more upgradable: processor, graphic card, RAM, hard-disks (or am I wrong?)
- I already have a 24-inch Dell Ultrasharp display (If I buy the iMac I would have to leave it in its box, which is a shame 😀)

What do you think?
Click to expand...


The iMac will work for all of your needs, and you can always sell your dell display to make the price even cheaper (or run 2 displays). The Mac pro is great, but very expensive. It really comes down to if having more storage and not having to partition your drive for Windows is worth the extra $800+whatever you would get for the Dell Display. If you went with the cheaper option you could get a newer one that much sooner with the money you saved. Either way I'm sure you will be happy. Good luck.
 
I would get iMac. If you get ATI 4850, it will run all games now and in near-future. Only thing you would upgrade in Mac Pro would be GPU (ATI 4870 or nVidia GTX285), RAM and HD can be upgraded in iMac as well
 
Don't get an iMac cause the current iMacs are awful, because of their awful displays with glass over it - it's horrible for your eyes. So, your left with a Mac pro, with no real use for a (in Apple's words) "pro machine", which is really just a normal tower computer. I say purchase a Psystar or build your own hackintosh, and boot from 2 HDD's - one Windows 7, one OS X. You really can not go wrong.
 
The Mac Pro will last you a longer time. When the computer starts to get slow(er) or needs more HD space, get some more RAM and a larger harddrive.

The iMac will most likely last you averagely 2 - 3 years, the Mac Pro will last 3 - 5. I went with the Mac Pro, which I bought 1 year ago January and it's still crazy fast, much faster than any of the iMacs to date.
 
armoguy94 said:
Don't get an iMac cause the current iMacs are awful, because of their awful displays with glass over it - it's horrible for your eyes. So, your left with a Mac pro, with no real use for a (in Apple's words) "pro machine", which is really just a normal tower computer. I say purchase a Psystar or build your own hackintosh, and boot from 2 HDD's - one Windows 7, one OS X. You really can not go wrong.
Click to expand...

What's so awful? I have nothing against the glass, I think it's nice. Easy to keep clean and protects the real display.

Hackintosh = Limited hardware, updates sucks (every update can break your system) etc etc. It's nice if you have time to play with but I just love the easiness of real Mac
 
I say go with an iMac with one of the optional (higher end) graphics cards.
That 24 inch screen is sweet imo. I've never had a problem with the glossy
displays.
 
Another vote for the iMac. I love my mid-2007 24" iMac and it's glossy display. I had a white 20" Core Duo iMac before it with a matte display and I prefer the glass.
​
 
Hellhammer said:
What's so awful? I have nothing against the glass, I think it's nice. Easy to keep clean and protects the real display.

Hackintosh = Limited hardware, updates sucks (every update can break your system) etc etc. It's nice if you have time to play with but I just love the easiness of real Mac
Click to expand...

The glass flips the image and when the light reaches your eyes, you have to keep reconstructing the image to make it look normal. It causes horrible eyestrain especially after a few hours, and this can cause many bad things for your eyes such as astigmatism..

If the iMacs used desktop components, or more importantly a MATTE SCREEN, I probably wouldn't have much against it.
 
I say go dual display with your Dell monitor and a 24" iMac.

There is always the option of external storage if you want to install additional OS's on their own drives.
 
armoguy94 said:
The glass flips the image and when the light reaches your eyes, you have to keep reconstructing the image to make it look normal. It causes horrible eyestrain especially after a few hours, and this can cause many bad things for your eyes such as astigmatism..
Click to expand...

Uh, no. 🙄

It's piece of acrylic glass, not a prism.
 
armoguy94 said:
The glass flips the image and when the light reaches your eyes, you have to keep reconstructing the image to make it look normal.
Click to expand...

Huh? 😕

It causes horrible eyestrain especially after a few hours, and this can cause many bad things for your eyes such as astigmatism..
Click to expand...

correction: "It causes ME horrible eyestrain after a few hours..." I am going on 24 months with this particular iMac and so far no eyestrain nor astigmatism and I stare it a LOT.
 
armoguy94 said:
Don't get an iMac cause the current iMacs are awful, because of their awful displays with glass over it - it's horrible for your eyes. So, your left with a Mac pro, with no real use for a (in Apple's words) "pro machine", which is really just a normal tower computer. I say purchase a Psystar or build your own hackintosh, and boot from 2 HDD's - one Windows 7, one OS X. You really can not go wrong.
Click to expand...

I actually find the glass on the iMac quite nice...
 
Don't buy the MacPro because of the extra drive space. You can always buy external drives and run them via firewire. That includes booting. Also, don't count on upgrading your MacPro. When I bought mine, I used that as an excuse but found that it's too expensive to replace the processors and graphics card and so never got around to doing it. I'm a video editor and graphic designer and rarely use all of the power of my MacPro. In hindsight, I could have easily gotten by with an iMac and saved a bundle of money.
 
IMO you should only buy a Mac Pro if you need the power. Technology moves at such a place that even though you can upgrade you mac pro you probably wont want to.
 
After reading your posts, I went to the store and bought an iMac (24-inch, 2.93, GT120). I just could not justify the cost of the Mac Pro, since I do not do heavy stuff.

My initial excitement went quickly down, as I tried to transfer my files from the broken MBP to the new iMac.

Talk about a smooth assisted migration! First, I tried to do the migration directly from my Time Capsule/Time Machine. But my new iMac could not retrieve the backup from Time Machine. What the hell????? 😡

I am lucky the hard drive on the MBP was still functioning, otherwise I would have lost all my pics. But transferring the files from the MBP was not a piece of cake either.

I tried to let the migration assistant to retrieve the files from the MBP, first wirelessly and then using a Firewire cable. All failed!

The last resort was to transfer the files manually and one by one, using target mode
- iPhoto library (most important)
- movies (also important)
- iTunes library (who cares? mostly podcasts and copies of my own CDs)
- documents (some important, such as my resume)
- the two applications (Comic Life & OmniOutliner) that I got for free with my first Mac and that I do not have on DVD. I had to copy the applications, as well as the libraries.
- my address book
- my Firefox bookmarks​

As for all other applications, I will download them again...

Talk about an assisted migration! And I was lucky that my MBP's hard drive was still functioning. Otherwise I would have lost my pictures.

The lesson I learned is not to solely rely on Time Machine. I'll buy myself a SuperDuper license and do manual backups on an external drive, on top of the automatic backups on the Capsule.

Other than that, I tried to play COD4 and saw a huge gain in performance compared to my MBP. I got decent scores, whereas I used to get humiliated before. 😎

Too bad my wife does not see this as an improvement... 😀
 
By the way, if you think I forgot to copy something important to my new iMac, let me know...
 
hope you enjoy your iMac purchase. They're nice machines and are very quiet, but I could never justify buying one. Considering I'm paying for the screen too, I'd like to at least be able to use it as a screen for a separate computer when the computer part of it gets too old.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back