rMBP for school? A few questions before buying.

[jmelick07]

I am going back to grad school and am planning on getting myself a rmbp to replace my 2008 aluminum macbook. Now, I understand I could save myself money by getting a mba but I can't get over the screen and smaller footprint of the rmbp. Also, moving up to the 15in is a no go as I have to ride public transportation daily and the extra $500 puts it out of my price range.

My program is going to require mostly paper writing and research and the idea of being able to change the resolution to 1680 x 1050 or 1400 x 900 also seems really appealing. Taking this into account as wel as the much newer processor (comparable to my current 2008 macbook) and twice the ram how much quicker on a day to day basis should this machine be?

My only real concern is the integrated graphics (seems to be a common concern). I like to play the occasional rts game (civ 5 mostly) and have heard that this is probably not going to be a pleasant experience on the rmbp. Any one have anything to say about this?

Lastly, where is the cheapest place to buy a 13in rmbp currently? Best i have found is $1614 at macmall.

Thanks!

 

[mankar4]

For word processing, reading pdf's and using the internet, theres not going to be a huge performance increase since the old one was fine at that. you'll see a big bump if you run tons of apps, or doing encoding, editing or other processor intensive work. The SSD makes opening files and apps incredibly fast, and is a huge improvement. I can't speak to the games experience, but interestingly, the apple website itself cites good performance in Civ 5 for the rmbp: http://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/features-retina/ (search the page for civ 5). I think you'd be fine. Maybe not at high specs for a game like Battlefield 3, but for SC2 or Civ 5, don't worry about it. And to be honest, I love the 13" rmbp, and have no complaints about it.

If you're a student, buy it through the apple online educational store for 1599. I think fry's was selling them in store for 1499 a while back, but I don't know if that is still going on; you could call and ask.