I'm going to be a student at my community college next year. I am not majoring in multimedia/graphic design, but I do like to work on that stuff as a hobby. My budget is roughly $2,000. I was thinking about getting the 13-inch 2.53GHz macbook pro with 8GB of ram or the 15-inch 2.66GHz with 4GB of ram. Portability is NOT a major concern of mine. It would be nice if it was portable, but doesn't have to be. Now do you think it would be a waste to have 8GB of ram? Is that going to boost any performance? I mean I don't know what would boost the speed of a macbook pro more..8GB or ram or 2.66Ghz.
I'm just a beginner with multimedia, so it's not like I will be churning out professional cinema videos and whatnot. But I do like to work with adobe after effects, premiere, photoshop, etc. I may be overestimating the mac, but I think it should handle all of these programs right? Probably not all running at the same time, but can it at least run them smoothly?
I have a VERY old desktop(about 7 years old) with 2.5Ghz and 712 MB of DDR Ram, and I surprisingly was able to run these programs individually. Mind you, it was a bit slow at times, but it worked better than I expected.
Like I said, i'm planning to be involved with all aspects of multimedia. Such as photography, web page design, video, etc. But no way professionally. I guess I just want experiment with everything right now.
What do you recommend? You're probably thinking that since I want to do all this multimedia work, I should def get the 17 inch. It's a lot more money than I'm wishing to pay, but maybe if I really need it, I could save up. I was thinking I could just buy the 24'' flat panel display for apple to hook up to if needed. Not really sure how good a mac can run these programs, but I would love to hear from anyone who uses a lower spec'd mac for multimedia purposes.
Also, I'm not really sure if I NEED it now. Like I said, its just a hobby of mine so its not mandatory for school or anything. Should I wait at least till I go to university to make more use of my mac? I've have never owned a laptop, so i'm primarily a desktop user.
I'm just a beginner with multimedia, so it's not like I will be churning out professional cinema videos and whatnot. But I do like to work with adobe after effects, premiere, photoshop, etc. I may be overestimating the mac, but I think it should handle all of these programs right? Probably not all running at the same time, but can it at least run them smoothly?
I have a VERY old desktop(about 7 years old) with 2.5Ghz and 712 MB of DDR Ram, and I surprisingly was able to run these programs individually. Mind you, it was a bit slow at times, but it worked better than I expected.
Like I said, i'm planning to be involved with all aspects of multimedia. Such as photography, web page design, video, etc. But no way professionally. I guess I just want experiment with everything right now.
What do you recommend? You're probably thinking that since I want to do all this multimedia work, I should def get the 17 inch. It's a lot more money than I'm wishing to pay, but maybe if I really need it, I could save up. I was thinking I could just buy the 24'' flat panel display for apple to hook up to if needed. Not really sure how good a mac can run these programs, but I would love to hear from anyone who uses a lower spec'd mac for multimedia purposes.
Also, I'm not really sure if I NEED it now. Like I said, its just a hobby of mine so its not mandatory for school or anything. Should I wait at least till I go to university to make more use of my mac? I've have never owned a laptop, so i'm primarily a desktop user.
