Replace Mac Pro at work with Macbook Pro for portability sake

[overheated]

situation:

i am forever wanting the same information at home that i used at work all day long. anything from emails, to files, to projects i am working on. to give you the background i have been using a mac pro @ work with like 6gb of memory, a mac pro at home (early 08 eight core) with 12gb of memory. so i have no shortage of speed at either location.

what held me back so far from using just one macbook pro was it's drive space (measly 100gb seagate drive) or so i thought. now there is a new drive in town - enter the Hitachi k500 500gb 12.5mm drive - suppose to fit my MBP 17" perfectly. i have a first version macbook pro that sits on a shelf. over the weekend i decided that i would attempt to cram all my work data on to the new Hitachi k500 500gb drive so i cracked open my macbook pro and installed one, loaded it all up with my stuff, and headed off to work on monday.

i have plenty of room for my data but it became glaringly obvious that a macbook pro is no mac pro. i am one of these guys who may have literally 15 to 20 program windows open at any one time and my machines are always doing something.

i am now faced with making the decision of - is the portability of the macbook pro worth the performance hit in stepping down from a mac pro.

where is the performance bottle neck? is it the proc's? HDD speed? or dual 2.16 cores? 2gb memory limit is my guess. i am waiting for programs to open, screen draws, beach balls, the works.

to read the forums there seems to be a thought that new MBP's are on the way. will they still have the current 4gb ram limit? will the procs or other hardware be fast enough to erase the performance gap i am feeling now? or should i just resign myself to having two sets of data that i sync as needed.

please give me your real world experience from those who have done similar.

 

[alphaod]

So I don't have a Mac Pro and nor do I run 20 program windows open at the same time but I can share what do.

On a daily basis I normally have a 3 browsers open, each with about 5-10 tabs, I have Skype, Adium open; I have Photoshop open as well because I make random crap when I'm bored; if I'm need to work I'll have Office 2008 open. I will definitely have my email client running. I have a torrent client on downloading something.

When I load a lot of the programs, I don't see a lot of memory usage; my memory covers what I need to do; my processor isn't severely tasked; it gets my work done without slowdowns; the biggest drawback is the HDD; it's slow and unweildy; I load 3 programs/files at once and I can feel the performance hit.

So I'd say going from a Mac Pro to a Macbook Pro, the biggest and possibly the only performance hit is in the HDD department; unless you're telling me your running scripts, encoding movies, and everything all at once, the MBP is powerful enough for everything; I'm not just talking about the lastest; I'm refering to everything since the Core Duo MBPs.

 

[Scottyk9]

What about this?

- IMAP for email
- .mac for synchronizing address book, ical, etc.
- foldershare for your active documents

= no computer compromise....

 

[alanlindsay]

With some configuring it is possible to access your MP remotely from your MPB. In effect you could just export the display from your MP to the MPB This could be an option for you. The Mac Pro really is a total beast though and is many times faster than the MPB in every department.

 

[Scottyk9]

With some configuring it is possible to access your MP remotely from your MPB. In effect you could just export the display from your MP to the MPB This could be an option for you. The Mac Pro really is a total beast though and is many times faster than the MPB in every department.

right yes, I forgot about back-to-my-mac (again .mac). Unfortunately this service does not work with all firewalls (does not allow me to access my computer at work from home, although does work the other way around)

 

[futuremac]

Up your RAM to 4GB. Get an external eSata HDD if you need more storage. Seagate 750GB 32MB cache in a Vantec Nexstar 360SU case.

 

[Trip.Tucker]

With some configuring it is possible to access your MP remotely from your MPB. In effect you could just export the display from your MP to the MPB This could be an option for you. The Mac Pro really is a total beast though and is many times faster than the MPB in every department.

I think you mean MBP, not MPB. i.e. MacBook Pro.

 

[overheated]

hey, thanks for the replies folks.

i do have a firewall that effectively blocks out "back to my mac" so i will or have used timbuktu with some success. i do have a .mac account but i also keep very close tabs on about 15 different email accounts which are pop3.

i am maxed on the memory for my machine @ 2gb. that was the limit for the first MBP. i have checked that fact out time and time again hoping it was 4gb but it's not.

hey, what about this....

i have highpoint esata cards install in all of my Pros. what if i got another external drive just to consist of my Home Directory? and i move around my Home directory like that? a 1tb would leave me wanting for nothing. if neither machine was on when the esata drive was not present then perhaps it would work - thoughts?