Newcomer to mac help me decide which notebook

[Canuck4Life]

Hey, so first time forum poster, long time reader. So I've wanted to buy a mac for about 4 years now and now comes the time to get a new computer for school in the fall. Currently I have am using an 8 year old 2.4ghz P4 dell with 512mb of ram, and have a version of linux mint installed as my os.

Now to cut to the chase, I'm a fairly tech savvy person and I am looking into refurbished macs, unless you can change my mind into brand new ones. I'd like to get either the new 2011 13" macbook pro or a 2010 15" macbook pro. I feel I might be content with the 13" one as its more portable however I cant get over the possible bottleneck of GPU in the future I would plan to have this computer for maybe 4 or 5 years. I'd plan on swapping out the superdrive for an ssd in a few years on either model.

What do I plan to do with them? Standard school work (word processing and the like), heavy itunes, few games (Diablo 3 when released and games that I would not be able to play on my ps3), might get into some video editing, and might go back to some 3d programs for fun. Hard to say never had so much power in a computer before.

These would be the 2 I'm looking at:
Macbook pro 13"
http://store.apple.com/ca/product/FC700LL/A?mco=MjIwMTAxNDA

Macbook pro 15"
http://store.apple.com/ca/product/FC372LL/A?mco=MTgxMzM0MzU

 

[Durious]

Hey, so first time forum poster, long time reader. So I've wanted to buy a mac for about 4 years now and now comes the time to get a new computer for school in the fall. Currently I have am using an 8 year old 2.4ghz P4 dell with 512mb of ram, and have a version of linux mint installed as my os.

Now to cut to the chase, I'm a fairly tech savvy person and I am looking into refurbished macs, unless you can change my mind into brand new ones. I'd like to get either the new 2011 13" macbook pro or a 2010 15" macbook pro. I feel I might be content with the 13" one as its more portable however I cant get over the possible bottleneck of GPU in the future I would plan to have this computer for maybe 4 or 5 years. I'd plan on swapping out the superdrive for an ssd in a few years on either model.

What do I plan to do with them? Standard school work (word processing and the like), heavy itunes, few games (Diablo 3 when released and games that I would not be able to play on my ps3), might get into some video editing, and might go back to some 3d programs for fun. Hard to say never had so much power in a computer before.

These would be the 2 I'm looking at:
Macbook pro 13"
http://store.apple.com/ca/product/FC700LL/A?mco=MjIwMTAxNDA

Macbook pro 15"
http://store.apple.com/ca/product/FC372LL/A?mco=MTgxMzM0MzU

The 15" would be a minimum if you plan to play Diablo 3, the game isn't yet released but definitely the intel integrated graphics will play it poorly. For comparison purposes SC2 was released mid 2010 and will likely have less requirements than D3 and that can barely play SC2 on any settings worth playing it (tried on my mini).

 

[Durious]

For comparison on games and frame rates see the articles on the cards associated to these machines:

MBP 13"
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-HD-Graphics-3000.37948.0.html

MBP 15"
http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GT-330M.22437.0.html

 

[palpatine]

i have a 13" mbp / 8gb ram. i think my computer "could" do what you want it to do, but it seems to me that you would be someone who would really benefit from the 15". in fact, i am not sure why you would consider the 13" at all if you don't put an emphasis on portability or price.