Trying to decide MBP 13", 15" or Air 13" or nothing

[hectorvs]

I read this thread through and there are some very good comments 🙂 gotta love the macrumors community.

I'd like to throw in my situation into the mix and see what you think.

I'm upgrading to the new 15" mbp, but I can't decide wether to get the base 2.0ghz model with the high res screen or the 2.2 model with the regular screen.

The reason for this is that I can get either model for the same price. Macmall is running a memorial day sale on the 2.2ghz at around $2050, changing the config to the high res screen brings the price up by $250... I don't think the high res screen is worth that.

However, I could get the base model with the upgraded screen for around the same price (~$2050), but I would be sacrificing some performance, specially on the GPU side.

I currently have a 2008 mbp with the standard res, I don't particularly find anything wrong with it, but I'm curious if the high res screen will make me more productive.

I'm a software developer so I'm basically looking at text all day, and I've read that the high res display can get a bit uncomfortable because of the higher pixel density. I tried it at the store and didn't see anything wrong with it, but looking at the screen in the store for a few moments is not the same as real world usage.

I would love to hear the opinion of some programmers on the high res screen 😛

I'm not a "hardcore" PC gamer, but I do play Starcraft 2 and maybe some MMO like Rift or an FPS style game like Portal 2 (definitely gettin me some of that diablo 3 action once its released). So maybe having the better GPU in the 2.2ghz model is better than a hi res screen?

Ok, so this got a bit long winded.

TL;DR: Is the extra horsepower on the 2.2ghz mpb worth not getting the hi res screen? or would the hi res screen be worth more for a programmer than the horsepower?

thanks!

 

[Kafka]

If you're going to game on it I think you should look at it the other way:

I high resolution screen will require a better graphic card (2.2ghz model), and the 2.0ghz model with its lower than average GPU will do better at a lower resolution.

It's all or nothing I would say.

 

[dragonev]

Congrats! Why did you the i7 instead of the i5?

I found a big benchmark test. All of the tests show that i7 is greater than i5. Here is the test = http://www.macworld.com/article/157893/2011/02/2011macbookpro_benchmarks.html

This thread is seriously awesome.


I am thinking the same thing but leaning toward the 15" due to the available video card.

Thanks everyone, now to sell these three POS laptops I have at the moment!

15"... you now just before checkout a checked again. Actually, 15" is good, but only the second one with 1Gb Radeon. But the price is far more than my 13". Thus, I decided to get 13".

 

[dragonev]

To developer: As for me, I would rather get MBP 2.2 with regular screen.

 

[dragonev]

Hi everyone again. Almost 3 days I'm a happy Mac user. But I got a problem. As you probably remember I took SSD 128GB. But now its only 76 left (actually when I get it was already 120Gb). I do not know where did all of this place gone actually (I just uploaded some photos and sync my iPhone and iPad). How can I find out where did the space gone?