Need Help with a weird 'Buy or Upgrade' Situation

[LYFK]

Alright, so I recently bought a refurb 11" Thunderbolt Macbook Air for my gf. It was i7, 4GB RAM, and 256 SSD for ~ $1400. I couldn't help it, she needs something light for school.

Now the problem is:

I've inherited her late 2008 (5,1?) 15" Unibody MBP. It's probably (?) 2.4GHz Core 2, 250GB HDD, 4GB RAM. The bottom right corner is dented from a drop.

I already own a late 2007 (3,1?) Santa Rosa MBP (pre-unibody). It's had a ton of work done on it (logic board, upper clam, fan replacement, two hard drive replacements). The processor speed is the same as hers, as well as the RAM. But, I run a 7200rpm 500GB HDD, and my superdrive doesn't work. My machine's in relatively in good condition, but you can tell a 'repair' person has damaged it.

My questions are:

1. If I were to upgrade one (for say $600-$700), which one is more worth upgrading and which one is more worth selling?

OR

2. Should I attempt to sell both and wait for June MBP refresh, or perhaps an iMac?


In terms of what my usage is like, I'm an industrial designer. So I would be running CAD programs, rendering programs, Adobe suite, sketchbok pro. I don't do any video editing, but I do take quite a bit of photos. My MBP is my main computer, so my 500GB is already at 80% capacity, and I'm typically always leaving Chrome, iTunes, Mail, iCal (and now Message) on.


Thoughts?

 

[thundersteele]

I would sell the 2008 machine and hope that the 2007 makes it another 4-6 month

 

[cocacolakid]

Sell the 2008, use the 2007 until you can buy a new or newer Macbook, and also get a nice large 1 or 2 tb external hard drive to store your photos on and/or give you more storage.

Once you get the new/newer Macbook, sell the 2007 to recoup some of your cost of the new one.

I wouldn't spend money upgrading either one, especially $600-700, that's too close to the cost of a new or recently used Macbook. Selling both of your Macbooks will easily cover the difference and the cost of an external hard drive for extra storage.

 

[LYFK]

Thanks guys, that was extremely helpful. Hopefully the June refresh won't disappoint!

 

[Boyd01]

FWIW, I just replaced my 2008 MBP which has the same specs as yours, but only a 160GB Hard Drive. It was rock solid until just about a month ago, and ever since then it will get very hot after about 2 hours use, then everything freezes and I have to do a forced shutdown by holding the power key.

I was pretty satisfied with that machine in terms of performance, and while it would have been nice to get something much faster like a new 15" MPB, I just didn't want to spend that much money. So my choice came down to the 13" MBP and 13" MBA.

After a lot of agonizing, I just got a 13" MBA i5/4GB/256GB for $1500 and am really happy with it. For me, the SSD speed advantage outweighed the additional ports and somewhat faster processor on the 13" MBP.

So, one thing to consider is that a 2008 or 2007 MBP may be great today, but tomorrow it may develop some kind of hardware problem that just won't justify the cost of repair. If you can sell it today, I think that makes sense personally.

In terms of performance, CPU bound tasks like rendering seem to be almost twice as fast on my 1.7GHz dual i5 MBA as compared to my 2.4HGz Core 2 Duo MBP, so I think you'll be happy with any of the new MBP's. If you get a model with an SSD you will see some very dramatic improvements - try loading some of your software on your girlfriend's MBA and you'll see what I mean.