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Should I sell my early 2011 base 15" (2.0GHz)?

J

JazzyFizzle

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 24, 2011
66
0
Hey, I have inevitably acquired one of the early 2011 MacBook pro 2.0GHz laptops (long story short, I got a VERY good deal).

It is brand new, unopened. I am a photography student, and do web design on the side, so photoshop, dreamweaver, illustrator and occasionally a bit of 3D CAD is what I will primarily be using it for.

I am also pretty into gaming (Battlefield 3, Minecraft mainly), so although I have a gaming desktop, it would be nice to make the move to my MacBook and sell the desktop.

Now, I know the graphics card in this laptop is terrible. So terrible I almost can't believe apple actually got away with sticking this piece of crap in such an expensive (over priced?) laptop. The new late 2011 MacBook is much MUCH better.

So, with all these things in mind, should I sell my 2.0GHz 15" MacBook pro and buy the new 2.2GHz model? I will probably sell mine for £1000 which means the new model will cost me a total of £549 (about $800ish).

The main difference between these two models is the HD 6490m 256mb, and the HD 6750 512mb.

Is it worth it? (for £549 ($884))
 
Two reasons:
1. I basically live at my girlfriends house. I go home roughly 1 night a week.
2. I want to sell it, it might even help me with the costs of buying the better MacBook.
 
Are you in a Higher Education such as a University by any chance?
'Cause then you might be able to access Apple Edu Store, which gives enormous discounts. :cool: You can even get the higher end for £23 more, or lower end for hundreds less.
Though why can't you live with both? MBP and your gaming desktop?
If you're pretty keen on gaming and know your desktop could last a while more, just part with the MBP :D
 
Well kinda :p, £500 is a lot of money to me though, so I just need to justify the cost. The graphics is better but is it £500 better? I'm not too sure :)

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leo.andres.21 said:
Are you in a Higher Education such as a University by any chance?
'Cause then you might be able to access Apple Edu Store, which gives enormous discounts. :cool: You can even get the higher end for £23 more, or lower end for hundreds less.
Though why can't you live with both? MBP and your gaming desktop?
If you're pretty keen on gaming and know your desktop could last a while more, just part with the MBP :D
Click to expand...

Thanks for the suggestion! I hadn't thought of getting a student discount. I will discuss it with my college :) any idea what the discount actually is?

Thank for replies :)
 
JazzyFizzle said:
Well kinda :p, £500 is a lot of money to me though, so I just need to justify the cost. The graphics is better but is it £500 better? I'm not too sure :)
Click to expand...

It's not worth the extra price. In the US at least, $900 is almost half the price - and you're not getting 50% better performance. You're better off using what you have until the next real update.
 
Discount falls somewhere in the 13-15% for the MacBook Pros.
Price is £1,332 for the 2.2GHz model and £1,572 for the 2.4GHz model for universities, if you are in like a college however, discount is probably lower, at only 5% or so. :eek:
 
JazzyFizzle said:
The main difference between these two models is the HD 6490m 256mb, and the HD 6750 512mb.

Is it worth it? (for £549 ($884))
Click to expand...

I wouldn't say so to be honest. For CAD and creative pro stuff the graphics card is of limited relevance. And no laptop can compete with a decent desktop for gaming without costing you an arm and a leg.

The new 15 inch Pro certainly can't compete with a reasonable desktop.
 
Ok, thank you all for the replies :) I will see what sort of discount I can get, but you have swayed me towards just keeping both desktop & MacBook. I might be able to sell my MacBook for more, considering it has never been opened.

My college is part of a university group, so the networks are linked. I will have a go on Monday and see what happens :)
 
Even if the new 15'' is better equipped for gaming, it's still not a gaming laptop. From that side, 500 pounds are hard to justify. For the other uses of your laptop, the graphics card won't make a difference, and the bump in CPU speed will be hardly notable.

So honestly, I don't think it's worth it.... But, this is probably the only solution for you, since you need mobility, and carrying around two laptops (one gaming laptop) is certainly not a good idea.
 
Last edited:
bruleke said:
So, you are planning to go to your GIRLFRIEND's house to PLAY MINECRAFT with a high end macbook pro?
Click to expand...

Haha, well I live here pretty much, so I need more than one way to entertain myself :p

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thundersteele said:
Even if the new 15'' is better equipped for gaming, it's still not a gaming laptop. From that side, 500 pounds are hard to justify. For the other uses of your laptop, the graphics card won't make a difference, and the bump in CPU speed will be hardly notable.

So honestly, I don't think it's worth it.... But, this is probably the only solution for you unless you, since you need mobility, and carrying around two laptops (one gaming laptop) is certainly not a good idea.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the help. I will keep it for now. It sounds like there might be a other upgrade in a few months so I should probably wait. That being said, if I can get a student discount and I might squeeze a bit more money out of this MacBook, I might actually not have to put as much as £500 in anyway! :)
 
Just move your gaming desktop to your girlfriend's house and use the MBP for college and the one night at your place, already wasting money on rent, no need to waste more in buying another laptop that wouldn't be that much better for gaming.
 
from a battlefield 3 perspective, you would def benefit from the higher end FX card. i have been extremely pleased with its performance

i have everything on high except shadows (which are medium) at 1280x800 and i average 35-40 outdoors and 50+ indoors

i chose 1280x800 to have more 'pretty' things (at 1440x900 most graphical settings must be turned way down)
 
Naimfan said:
Ah, you'll learn, young one . . .

;)
Click to expand...


Haha "more than one" ;)


Anyway thanks for suggestions guys. I've decided if it can't run battlefield 3 I'll buy the new one. Hopefully I won't have to dish out as much cash as I thought :)
 
JazzyFizzle said:
Hey, I have inevitably acquired one of the early 2011 MacBook pro 2.0GHz laptops (long story short, I got a VERY good deal).

It is brand new, unopened. I am a photography student, and do web design on the side, so photoshop, dreamweaver, illustrator and occasionally a bit of 3D CAD is what I will primarily be using it for.

I am also pretty into gaming (Battlefield 3, Minecraft mainly), so although I have a gaming desktop, it would be nice to make the move to my MacBook and sell the desktop.

Now, I know the graphics card in this laptop is terrible. So terrible I almost can't believe apple actually got away with sticking this piece of crap in such an expensive (over priced?) laptop. The new late 2011 MacBook is much MUCH better.

So, with all these things in mind, should I sell my 2.0GHz 15" MacBook pro and buy the new 2.2GHz model? I will probably sell mine for £1000 which means the new model will cost me a total of £549 (about $800ish).

The main difference between these two models is the HD 6490m 256mb, and the HD 6750 512mb.

Is it worth it? (for £549 ($884))
Click to expand...

Yes, sell it.
 
nothing with with the base model.

i can export a 8min video in HD in 7mins off it. much better than my previous 13inch :D
 
If it's unopened, brand new, under warranty, etc. you can definitely sell it for more than £1000. I think you'll be able to get at least £1200 for it, especially if it has the Lion-branded box.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A334 Safari/7534.48.3)

The discount is not that big in the US
 
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