Should I 'upgrade' my mid–2009 17" MBP to the new 15" MBP?

[RetepNamenots]

Before anyone tells me I'm completely insane, hear me out:

I was given the 17" MBP new, as a gift from a client. I was going to buy the laptop anyway, but instead had to give £400 to charity to show my company that I wasn't being bribed/used.

I also bought AppleCare for the laptop which cost around £280 I think. So I've spent £680 on the machine in total and it still has 1 year, 3 months left of warranty.

I've watched a few recent auctions for the same model that I have on eBay, and they've gone for around £1150 –*minus fees that'll give me about £1100 to play with..


So, tldr; I will have to spend another £400 to go from my existing 17" to a new 15".

I'm a designer and use my laptop for all my work, and could live with the lower resolution (I have an external display) and would just like increased speed, plus the smaller features look tempting –*HD iSight and SDXC card reader for instance (I've never used the ExpressCard slot on mine).


Cheers

Is it worth it?

 

[bigvb@hotmail.c]

lol im in exactly the same position. Bought 17 mbp in march 2009, was £1750 for basic model with my HE discount.

Would hope to get £1100 at least on eBay post fees.

Im massively indecisive about which 15" i should get, the high end works out about £1650 with hi-res screen, dunno if i wanna spend another £550 for the upgrade

 

[Evil Spoonman]

It depends what programs you use. The base 15" will have a faster processor than your 17", but the anemic 6490M is a limiting factor if you do anything graphical. It is about on-par with the 9600M GT, but often times frame buffer is more important than raw speed. A 512MB 9600M GT might well be favourable to a 256MB 6490M.

The premium 15" is better in every possible way than the old 17". It is the clear upgrade path.