What Kind of Macbook to Go With

[NGen]

Note: I'm typing this from my iPhone using Opera, so I'll do my best but perfect spelling isn't guaranteed, especially since auto-correct is off in Opera.

I'm currently going into my Junior year in Highschool, so obviously a laptop isn't exactly required for all my classes. But I'd like to get a reliable, multi-use laptop that could last me mostly through college when it comes up. Just one less thing to worry about when this whole thing comes up. Not to mention that I want to develop for the iDevices and I'm currently land-locked with a desktop, so a Macbook of some kind seems like the best choice.

With this in mind, I'm looking to see what the best Macbook to get would be. I have a job, but on average I make $50-150 a week, so I don't plan on getting this thing in the near future. But I don't plan on waiting half a year for the thing either. I have 2 years of school left, I'd like to make the most of it.

Screen size is a bit of an issue, I like to multitask, but with Exposé I don't think that would be much of a problem. I'd like to play a couple of 3D games, even playing on the lowest settings would be fine. But that would just be for mobile entertainment, it's not that important. Just convinient.

I was looking at the Macbook, but the limited 5400RPM hard drives seemed like they would be a major bottleneck during booting. The price was right though, and I was going to go with 4GB if I ever did go with it.

The 13" Macbook Pros looked like they were about the same as the regular Macbook, but I can't really be sure since I'm currently limited to my phone and for some reason Apple never made a mobile version of their own site, causing extremely difficuly navigation of their site, and just comparing the two could take about an hour.

The 15" Macbook pro (lowest-end model) looked perfect, but at $1900 with a student discount it was a bit pricey, possibly worth waiting for though, if necessary. (Price is probably wrong, but I do know that it'll take me a bit to get to whatever its price is.)

So what do you guys think? I saw someone playing Portal on what looked like a regular Macbook, so if that's the kind of power those things have then the Macbook is my kind of laptop. Like I said, I don't need extreme performance.

 

[wordoflife]

When exactly do you plan to buy it? If you do in the next 2-3 months, then thats fine, but if you're gonna stick around MUCH longer 6-12 months, I bet they'll have a new Macbook Pro.

 

[tonywang.xmpt]

If you don't "truly" need the extra performance,
then the MacBook would perfectly suit your needs.

For your needs,
there's no need to spend the extra money.

When you feel the urge to upgrade,
you can upgrade the MacBook by increasing its ram, hd storage space
and possible even to a SSD.

If you feel that the MacBook is too "low-end" for you
or you prefer the aluminum look,
then you should go for the low-end MBP 13'
That should be as high as you should go.

Like I stated above,
if you ever feel that you need to upgrade,
just upgrade ram, hd, or to a SSD.

Resolution wise,
if the screen is ever to small for you,
by a good monitor to go with your MacBook.
I have my MBP hooked up to my 20' HD monitor whenever I feel the urge to watch a movie.

 

[Meever]

You should come back and ask this question again once you've saved up a grand. You can then get advice on saving up another 100 for the 13", or 700 more for the 15".

From the sound of things 13" seems more than enough for you. You're not thinking about doing any heavy editing so the i5 isn't needed. You don't game or render models so the 330m isn't needed. You can use the money you saved for getting a SSD, external display, whatever else you can think of.

 

[I'mAMac]

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