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Should I buy now or wait? Just want some more opinions

R

R-41157

macrumors member
Original poster
Feb 13, 2008
49
0
Under Your Bed . . .
Hi All, First post - hope it is in the right place!

Im making the swtich from PC to Mac for Uni and have been weighing up all the options. I will mainly be running photoshop, illustrator, indesign and dreamweaver, all CS3 and possibly Final Cut as well. I need the machine to be portable but also be fast and have a good hard drive etc etc.

I have come down to either getting a full spec macbook or full spec 15"MBP. I have been waiting a little while for the new update to come out on the MBP but have been getting frustrated when it hasnt surfaced and I dont fancy waiting another month or so to find out that there is still no update, so I really need to buy now. But I also dont want to get a MBP to then see an update surface.

My thought today was to get a full spec macbook for now and get a MBP around the time of my birthday in Ocotober as the update will be out and any kinks etc should be worked out by now.

I just wanted to know what your thoughts were on this idea? Is the macbook a good machine for doing design work? Obviously it has a smaller screen and integrated graphics, but will this make too much of a difference when working on Photoshop etc to warrent spending an extra £800 or so on a MBP for it to be updated soon afterwards?

Thanks in advance for any good advice!
 
I would expect Apple to also announce the Penyrn MBP's soon, this next Intel chip, which should be shipping in quantity soon. There may well be a redesign, as the build quality of the MBP is relatively poor compared to other Macs, and high-end laptops, its also due an update. The MacBook may or may not receive an update around the same time.
 
R-41157 said:
Hi All, First post - hope it is in the right place!

Im making the swtich from PC to Mac for Uni and have been weighing up all the options. I will mainly be running photoshop, illustrator, indesign and dreamweaver, all CS3 and possibly Final Cut as well. I need the machine to be portable but also be fast and have a good hard drive etc etc.

I have come down to either getting a full spec macbook or full spec 15"MBP. I have been waiting a little while for the new update to come out on the MBP but have been getting frustrated when it hasnt surfaced and I dont fancy waiting another month or so to find out that there is still no update, so I really need to buy now. But I also dont want to get a MBP to then see an update surface.

My thought today was to get a full spec macbook for now and get a MBP around the time of my birthday in Ocotober as the update will be out and any kinks etc should be worked out by now.

I just wanted to know what your thoughts were on this idea? Is the macbook a good machine for doing design work? Obviously it has a smaller screen and integrated graphics, but will this make too much of a difference when working on Photoshop etc to warrent spending an extra £800 or so on a MBP for it to be updated soon afterwards?

Thanks in advance for any good advice!
Click to expand...

For CS3 and Final Cut work, Macbook is not powerfull enough. Go Pro!
 
I currently have a Macbook and I plan to upgrade to the MBP when the new updates happen. I use Photoshop and I feel the MB screen is just too small. If screen size is not an issue for you, go with the MB as it will handle photoshop just fine.
 
Buy your RAM separately too, and you won't need a high end MBP, the low end 15" will be fine. Possibly with more RAM, but 2GB should be enough for now, and I'd be shocked to see it come with less.
 
weichengwang said:
For CS3 and Final Cut work, Macbook is not powerfull enough. Go Pro!
Click to expand...

MacBook will cope just fine with CS3 and Final Cut Pro although other applications in the Final Cut Suite might struggle (I'm thinking of Color and Motion here).
 
Cheers for all the opinions guys!

I have actually just been into my local apple store, again, and looked at the graphics of both the macbook and macbook pro and there does seem to be a significant difference on iphoto. If there was a confirmation that a MBP update was actually going to happen with a redesign and had a confirmed date that it was actually going to surface, I would wait and get one, but with all this speculation, dissapointment and no confirmation I am still leaning towards a macbook so that I don't loose too much money in all and get a pro later in the year.

I use a 14" HP pavillion dv1000 at the moment and it runs CS3 Creative suite just fine and it is only 1.6ghz with 1GB RAM so I can only assume that a full spec macbook would definately be a step up. I have a week to consider this though while im in New York!

Would love to hear some more opinions from you lot though! :D
 
See this. Intel released their newer chip at the beginning of January. That chip was shipped at the beginning of January. So Apple will release the new MBP soon with that chip.
 
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