Hey Guys,
I have the macbook pro stated in my signature. I was thinking selling it and buy the core i5 or i7. to have better cpu, better battery life, graphics (automatic switching) and to get the matte screen.
do you think is a worthy upgrade?
also i was wondering do the sell antiglare screen macbook pro 15 in store (London).
Thanks
Hmmm, my October of 2008 purchased MBP (on closeout, it's the Sep. and earlier model with the 8600M GT and I saved $600 in the process by getting that model instead of the "new" one that month) has a matte screen already, so that's no reason for me to want to upgrade. The model from Oct. 2008 through mid 2009 wasn't really significantly faster in ANY area what-so-ever and then following model, just barely. The i5/i7 models are the first ones to show a significant performance increase for CPU and graphics are slightly faster (still little difference for gaming, IMO; both are so-so compared to a desktop GPU). For most uses, however, we're talking about splitting hairs, though. A few seconds faster rendering isn't going to make or break my bank and Logic has plenty of power to spare here and FCP won't use the 2nd core as it is.
In other areas, the uni-body looks nicer and is more solid (matters little to me, though and I like the keyboard style on mine) and I do NOT like the non-removable battery design (lasts longer, but I can swap batteries if I need more power and I won't have to take it apart to change the battery in a few years time). I also like having my 2nd FW port (my PreSonus is using the FW400 port and my backup drive can then still easily plug into the FW800 port without any pass-through, etc.). I also have a real upgrade slot, not just a SD reader (massive down-grade, IMO) which I could use to add something like E-Sata if I wanted or a 2nd FW bus, etc.) Like I said, mine has a REAL matte screen, not a glass one with an anti-glare filter in front of it. It sounds like you have the newer one from the end of 2008 which had two GPU cores, but doesn't auto-switch. I don't have to worry about that since my 8600M GT is on 100% of the time so that's a non-issue here as well.
So I can't say for certain with your particular needs (glare screen and non-auto GPU switch with somewhat faster CPU/GPU performance) but for me, there's no question that the CPU/GPU improvements aren't enough to warrant a new machine in my case. FCP and Logic already run fine here, let alone all the normal stuff (browsing, etc.) run perfectly fast. Gaming isn't that great either way (better off using my Windows machine unless I'm on the road or something) so it's a non-issue here.
I'd sooner put my money towards a new desktop machine, maybe a high-powered Hackintosh in the $1200-1500 range with BD burners, 4-cores, a true desktop high powered GPU with a SLI option for Windows boots gaming, etc. It'd be like a low-end Mac Pro with even more GPU power and I could do all kinds of stuff with BD encoding in Windows, etc. for my AppleTV whole house audio/video system, etc. and it'd still cost less than a new MBP. My advice would be to keep what you have unless you have a real need for the newer features (doesn't sound like it offhand). $1000-2000 (depending on the sale of your old MBP) can buy quite a few neat things that do a lot more than a slightly higher CPU/GPU set of numbers, IMO, but that's me.
