What new MBP for College?

[bc008]

Now that the new MBP's are out I'm going to get one for college (starts in the fall).

Right now I just browse the web, listen to music (larger library), and type papers. The laptop must be pretty portable as I will be walking everywhere. (no 17"). While my needs are pretty light now, I am majoring in architecture and minoring in art and design so it should be able to run autocad and photoshop and stuff. My absolute max budget is $2,000 but keeping it around $1,500 would make me and my parents happier.

I have 4GB of ram on my iMac now and max it out more often than I think I should. Right now 525MB is wired, 2.13GB Active, 1GB Inactive, and 86MB free. I am using about 300GB on my HD but plan to clean up everything before transferring everything over so that should slim up a bit.

 

[miles01110]

Buy a refurb 15" from the last revision.

 

[vincenz]

Either get a high end 13 or baseline 15. Overall you're probably better with the 15.

 

[iMacThere4Iam]

I'd say 15, but wait until summer. Apple usually gives away a printer and an iPod Touch with any Mac purchase between June and August.

 

[bc008]

I'd say 15, but wait until summer. Apple usually gives away a printer and an iPod Touch with any Mac purchase between June and August.

I completely forgot about that! I might just wait if I can stand it. I can even save up some more money and get the 15" for sure.

 

[Matthew9559]

Yeah, I have done that back to school a few times before. It's very nice if you just sell the iPod Touch and get some cash back. Not much but it helps!

 

[MacAztec]

I'm graduating from Engineering this year, and I've used my Late 2006 MBP (2GB RAM, 200GB HD, 2.13GHz Core2Duo) for the past 4 years. It's served me just fine.

I ran the apps you mentioned, including Mathematica, ProE, and a few others. You'll be fine with any Mac, really.

 

[andrewsd]

I'm graduating from Engineering this year, and I've used my Late 2006 MBP (2GB RAM, 200GB HD, 2.13GHz Core2Duo) for the past 4 years. It's served me just fine.

I ran the apps you mentioned, including Mathematica, ProE, and a few others. You'll be fine with any Mac, really.

As ^^^ they said I think any Mac will meet your needs except maybe a MacBook.

 

[bc008]

@MacAztec, I see you live in San Luis Obispo. Do you go to Cal Poly? I was actually looking at their architecture program but chose U of M over them because its closer to home, but I don't know how much longer I can take the cold haha

 

[MacAztec]

Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

Hey there! Yeah, I go to Poly. I'm in my last year of Industrial Engineering here. I HIGHLY recommend this school and the area. It's beautiful, warm, and the College is amazing.

Let me know if you want to chat more about it. Funny thing, I almost went to U of M!

 

[toxic]

any MBP will do...even last year's 13".