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Should I get the 2.26ghz or the 2.53ghz?

shakeman0

shakeman0

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 20, 2009
632
22
Im going to purchase a new 13" macbook pro and am debating wether or not I need to get the 2.26ghz or 2.53ghz. If I got the 2.26 I would upgrade the ram to 4gb and the hard drive to 250gb. So is it worth the 200$ to get the 2.53 processor? I would just be using the computer for web surfing, some games, and mostly website design.

Thanks,

P.S.

Can the apple store customize the macbook pro at the store? Or would I have to order it online? (I don't feel comfortable changing the hard drive and ram myself)
 
I pretty much plan to do the same thing with my new 2.26 but with a 500gb hdd (upgrading the ram and hdd myself however). I have yet to upgrade the ram to more than 2GB but even with the stock 2gb, I have yet to experience any slow downs of any sort and it's quite snappy.
 
same situation

i was in the same boat as you about a month or two ago. i got the 2.26 and used the money i saved on all the other stuff i needed for the MBP. my friend has a 2.56 and i have ran side by side real life tests and there is no difference what so ever, until i upgraded by MBP and no mine is much faster than his.

save your money you will need it for apple care!
 
I went with 2.26 with 160gb.
I already upgraded memory to 4GB (about $50 with rebate from newegg)
IMHO, the clock speed difference between 2.53 and 2.26 doesn't justify $200. And with $200, I think getting SSD HDD will dramatically improve the speed of operations with MBP.
Also if you do web design, I guess you will be using photoshop and deal with many digital photos so having SSD will definitely be a big plus.

Some argue that 2.53-2.26 = 0.27 is not the case since the CPU is Core2Duo which makes it 0.27 x 2 = 0.54 Ghz difference. (Just something to ponder. ;))

Well SSD is also very expensive at the moment but Intel is releaseing new line of SSD so price will fall in due time.
There are many SSD articles floating around the web so make sure that is something you would like to do.

I am not sure about Apple store installing 3rd party upgrades. (best to go and visit genius at the :apple: store) Installing memory wasn't all that hard though.

I do all the heavy lifting on my desktop so I can't say for 100% that 2.56 is not worth $200 but using the MBP for surfing/movies/MP3s/coding with 2.26 is more than enough IMHO.

Well those were my 2cents, ;)


shakeman0 said:
Im going to purchase a new 13" macbook pro and am debating wether or not I need to get the 2.26ghz or 2.53ghz. If I got the 2.26 I would upgrade the ram to 4gb and the hard drive to 250gb. So is it worth the 200$ to get the 2.53 processor? I would just be using the computer for web surfing, some games, and mostly website design.

Thanks,

P.S.

Can the apple store customize the macbook pro at the store? Or would I have to order it online? (I don't feel comfortable changing the hard drive and ram myself)
Click to expand...
 
I plan on doing all my upgrades through apple. Does anyone think I should upgrade to 500gb hd? I don't know if I'll need that much space but I saw that I can do that and bump my ram up to 4gb and it would be the same price. Or should I just go ahead and move the 160gb hd to 250gb hd for $50 more/ 320gb hd for $100 more.

Also, like I said I will be doing the upgrade thru apple as I don't feel comfortable doing it myself.
 
Flojojr2007 said:
I plan on doing all my upgrades through apple. Does anyone think I should upgrade to 500gb hd? I don't know if I'll need that much space but I saw that I can do that and bump my ram up to 4gb and it would be the same price. Or should I just go ahead and move the 160gb hd to 250gb hd for $50 more/ 320gb hd for $100 more.

Also, like I said I will be doing the upgrade thru apple as I don't feel comfortable doing it myself.
Click to expand...

Get the 500GB hard drive. Or get the 320GB hard drive and get an external hard drive in the future.
 
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