Trying to decide on an Intel laptop

Make sure it's a Late 2011, those are much better than Early 2011s. I think that's a pretty good deal and offer. Good luck!

 

You do realize that this is the "PowerPC" forum, your post might gather more responses in an Intel group?

 

The Intel group is going to blast him for wanting an older one instead of the brand new one.

 

He lives in the Jailbreak forums too.

 

He lives INSIDE both forums, heh.

 

A late 2011 is my main computer-I can't recommend it highly enough.

As said, go for a late 2011. If nothing else, you get Thunderbolt.

 

The Early 2011s also had Thunderbolt.

 

You should definitely go with something newer, get a refurb late 2013 rMBP as a minimum. You'll get a Retina display and a thinner profile.

I spend most of my time in the Intel Mac sub-forums, as you can tell

Spec-wise there doesn't seem to be much of a difference between the early and late 2011 13" MBPs. In fact, from what I hear they're so much alike that you can even install Snow Leopard on the late 2011 using disks that shipped with the early 2011.

With integrated graphics you're safe from Radeongate.

 

As I said, I've used the crap out of my late 2011 with no signs of it slowing down.

It was my first Mac, and remains my most used(although now that I have the '08 15" it may get bumped a bunch since I cloned the HDD off my 2011).

 

I have an early 2011 MacBook Pro and it works fine. I've owned it since 2011 and it has been used since I bought it in mid 2011.

 

I had an early 2011 13" for about 6 months before I sold it and it was excellent. I wouldn't hesitate at that price.

 

That's a wicked price. I have an early 2011 13" MBP with 8GB ram as my daily driver. I do all my computer science work on it everyday. It's incredibly reliable and even survived being soaked from a leaked bottle.

I use the thunderbolt port with a 6TB external drive and an Apple Cinema Display daisy chained on. Ethernet is nice to have, as well as a CD drive for the odd burn and even a FireWire 800 port I use for my iSight camera.

Probably the best model for backward compatibility of hardware VS power of a modern Intel machine.

I would highly recommend.

 

I am running out of boiling tar and have already run out of feathers...

 

I've been tarred, sadly.

 

There's very little difference between the early and late 2011 13". CPU got a speed bump of 100MHz and they fitted a slightly bigger hard drive. That's it. Even the model ID is the same.

 

The 13" models were never really prone to GPU failures. The early 2011s are just a bit slower than the late 2011s. If you stick a SSD in it with a 16 GB RAM upgrade then they really shine in terms of performance. Keep in mind that they are the second to last model to run OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard!

 

Damn, I miss my 2011 15". My perfect Mac ... if only the GPU hadn't been made of chocolate.

Unless you buy a Thunderbolt Dock, the rMBP requires lots of bits hanging out of it to add back the functions they stripped out to get it a couple of mm thinner. Nice machine, but compromised for my usage. Ethernet is the future!

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The late-2011 works with the early-2011 restore disks to get Snow Leopard back on it. I borrowed some from work to banish Lion off mine when I bought it.

You can also install 10.6 via TDM from an older Mac. Once it gets updated to 10.6.7 (I think) all the drivers are there to allow it to boot natively.

 

That is what I was referencing. 10.6.7 will boot but only 10.6.8 will function fully.

 

The ones I borrowed were 10.6.7 from a 15". Might have been a glitch with the Bluetooth card perhaps which 10.6.8 ironed out.

Anyone with an ounce of sense would update to 10.6.8 now anyway.

 

What was the difference from 10.6.7 to 10.6.8 that people wouldn't want to update?

 

Not aware of one.

I think Altemose was referring to the early-2011 10.6.7 restore media having a later (i.e. customised) build than the normal OS X update. So if using retail Snow Leopard media you'd need 10.6.8.

 

I've bought two retail copies of Snow Leopard in the past 3 weeks directly from Apple. One was SL Server and the other SL Client.

Both were 10.6.3. Assuming that Apple is only stocking the newest retail release, I'd guess that there are no 10.6.8 disks.

Of course, gray disks are a different story.