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What MbPro

Pcambo86

Pcambo86

macrumors member
Original poster
Sep 28, 2008
32
31
Starting a maths degree in September. It's an open degree so it's going to be done at home, with books and website. Looking at getting 13" MBPro. My budget is £1000 and at the moment my options look 128gb hd with 16gb ram or 256gb hd with 8gb ram. These come to close to £1000 with student discount. Having both comes to about £1200 and can't stretch to that. So what would you recommend I get? Thanks in advance.
 
You really don't define what the actual usage will be for the computer so its hard to say if you need the 16GB of ram. I'd ho out on a limb and say you probably won't need that much ram, but you will be easily running out of space with 128GB so get the second option of 256GB and 8GB
 
Suppose I will be using word processor. Be watching a lot of online lectures. Probably using a maths based app. A lot of use will be at home.
 
Pcambo86 said:
Suppose I will be using word processor. Be watching a lot of online lectures. Probably using a maths based app. A lot of use will be at home.
Click to expand...
Then the 8/256 configuration would suit you well.

Very little people have an actual need for 16GB. The people who need 16GB are the ones who run several VMs and do a lot of media production.
 
Pcambo86 said:
Suppose I will be using word processor. Be watching a lot of online lectures. Probably using a maths based app. A lot of use will be at home.
Click to expand...
Yeah then you definitely don't need 16GB of ram now or in the near future. Get the one with the most disk space.
 
Your use case can be performed adequately on any modern computer buy what you like.

However check and see if the software you need is windows only before you commit to a mac. I have windows on mine to run one program for studying.
 
Thanks for the replies. At the moment I don't seem to be able to find what software is needed, if any for my study. Google just throws up replies for other subjects. So disk space would be more essential. Might save some money if I get the base 13 and flash/sd card, or is that a bad idea?
 
It's not a bad idea but it has it's own issues SD cards are about 10 x slower than the SSD's in modern rMBP's and they can have issues with remaining mounted during sleep and shutdown. Also if you need windows on there in the future you'll struggle with boot drive space...
 
Decisions hmmmm £170 for double storage. It's quite a lot really. I won't be storing music or photos on it as have a Mac mini, so can stream the music etc. how much space would be available after operating system and ms office. Just a rough guess.
 
So found out will be using a few basic windows only programs. So would the 8gb 256 be ok for say running a vm for just these. The program's look like they were created for windows xp so they don't look power hungry
 
So decided to go for the 256gb with 8gb. Comes today, got it delivered to my local pick up point (30 secs away) just in case I'm not in. So excited. Already got parallels and windows ready. Going to get office uni the end of the week. For £50 and 4 year subscription and 1tb one drive I can't go wrong. Thanks everyone for there input. :):apple:
 
Pcambo86 said:
So decided to go for the 256gb with 8gb. Comes today, got it delivered to my local pick up point (30 secs away) just in case I'm not in. So excited. Already got parallels and windows ready. Going to get office uni the end of the week. For £50 and 4 year subscription and 1tb one drive I can't go wrong. Thanks everyone for there input. :):apple:
Click to expand...

Office uni will give you the mac versions of those programs as well you may not need to use windows at all...
 
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