Quick question about the 17" Unibody v. new iMac

[juliancs]

Hi folks

So I've got a 17" inch unibody, 320 7200 rpm 2.9ghz arriving on friday. With the advent of the new iMacs, I'm wondering if it is worth getting that instead. The 3.06ghz processor does not change much, and I have 4 x 1TB harddrives at home anyway, so that does not matter either. I hardly move my laptop, but am starting music uni in september and so may be doing so then. The biggest difference I can see is the Graphics card. Is the ATi 4850 miles miles better than the 9600m? I suppose it is..I game quite a lot, but even on my 2.66ghz x1600 256 mb, I'm playing fallout 3(lowest graphic settings but I can still really enjoy it). I supposing in terms of music recording, there will not be much difference in performance between the two?

Any thoughts?

 

[MagicWok]

Personally, this kind of question doesn't really make much sense.

Portability is why you buy a laptop. If you're just going to leave the MBP on your desk, you shouldn't have bought it in the first place tbh.

 

[DaveDaveDave]

I just got my 2.93 MBP this morning, and I'm transferring files via the Migration Assistant as I write this. I'm also a musician and have a little studio in my basement. I run Cubase 5 on my white 24" 2.16ghz iMac, and usually record 2 to 18 tracks at a time ver firewire interfaces. I can usually stay as low as 8ms latency while running a bunch of CPU intensive plugins too. This machine is nowhere near as fast as the 2.93ghz MBP.

That said, I'd stick with the MBP for school. When you start school, I'll bet you'll REALLY appreciate the portability/power combination. Wanna record some stuff at school? How about writing papers over at your girlfriends place instead of a complete raincheck. Or skipping the weekend plans altogether because you have to complete an assignment and your big ol' iMac is,well, just plain too big to lug all over the place... (DOH - just read the part about your MB...)

Yep, I think you made the right decision in the first place. If your worried about processing power, the MBP will be absolutely fine. Also, running DAW software or sibelius, the graphics cards won't make a difference. Plus, next year when Snow Leopard comes out, I don't think the ATI graphics cards will help boost system perfomance at all...

Just my .002 spacebucks, but I hope it helps!

Dave

Hi folks

So I've got a 17" inch unibody, 320 7200 rpm 2.9ghz arriving on friday. With the advent of the new iMacs, I'm wondering if it is worth getting that instead. The 3.06ghz processor does not change much, and I have 4 x 1TB harddrives at home anyway, so that does not matter either. I hardly move my laptop, but am starting music uni in september and so may be doing so then. The biggest difference I can see is the Graphics card. Is the ATi 4850 miles miles better than the 9600m? I suppose it is..I game quite a lot, but even on my 2.66ghz x1600 256 mb, I'm playing fallout 3(lowest graphic settings but I can still really enjoy it). I supposing in terms of music recording, there will not be much difference in performance between the two?

Any thoughts?

 

[juliancs]

I'll just stick with the MBP. If it can fufill my gaming needs now, the new one should be fine. The 4850 just seems pretty awesome. I've got it at home most of the time but that option, as Dave said, of taking it somewhere, or taking it to the sofa to watch a movie etc, is too tempting.