Student Asking for Advice

[keno190]

Long time lurker, first time poster.

Here's my dilemma. I am an incoming senior in a liberal arts college and will be purchasing my first macbook pro. To describe me, I am a life-long time PC user hoping to switch to OSX. I work fairly extensively with macs at school and in my internships given my interests.

I need help deciding which refurbished macbook pro to buy for my needs.
I am hopefully going to work in the web design/video field. So I need to be able to run the Adobe line of products (CS4/5) without a hitch. I do some hdr photography with photomatix pro.

My old hp laptop lasted me 4 years and it was running a 2.1 C2D processor with an AMD 256mb dedicated graphics card. I made that poor thing's video card work by powering a 24" ASUS monitor along with a intuos tablet.

I am still a student and I can afford the new high-end 2011 mbps. Barely. However I would like to see if I can get away with a cheaper refurb model and save some money.

 

[Apple OC]

any MBP will do ... however a 15" may suit you well

 

[KidZgOtMac]

15" is the way to go, sir.

 

[Eradik]

Agreed. Go with the 15". If you REALLY want the bigger screen go for the 17", but I think the 15" would be sufficient. I wouldn't recommend the 13".

 

[keno190]

Ok. The 15" is it. I'm looking at the refurb page and would it be better to shell out for the 2.2 quad, 2.0 quad, or the 2.6 dual i7s?

 

[KidZgOtMac]

Ok. The 15" is it. I'm looking at the refurb page and would it be better to shell out for the 2.2 quad, 2.0 quad, or the 2.6 dual i7s?

The base 2.0 is enough, these are quad-core machines. I went ahead for the 2.2 but in my case they ran out of the 2.0 and nearest store was a few hours away plus I had the $$$. If you have the extra cheddar to spare, .2 GHz, a slightly better AMD Radeon Chip and an extra 250 GB of HDD worries you so much then go ahead.

15-inch: 2.0 GHz
2.0GHz quad-core
Intel Core i7
4GB 1333MHz
500GB 5400-rpm1
Intel HD Graphics 3000
AMD Radeon HD 6490M with 256MB GDDR5

15-inch: 2.2 GHz
2.2GHz quad-core
Intel Core i7
4GB 1333MHz
750GB 5400-rpm1
Intel HD Graphics 3000
AMD Radeon HD 6750M with 1GB GDDR5

 

[jbg232]

Ok. The 15" is it. I'm looking at the refurb page and would it be better to shell out for the 2.2 quad, 2.0 quad, or the 2.6 dual i7s?

If you will be working with images/digital arts then go for the upgraded 15" for the better graphics card which will help more than a cpu increase for digital image manipulation.