Which mac is the better buy?

[nbritton]

A 13" Macbook Air loyally served me perfectly during law school. If money is not much of a concern, I suggest the 12" rMB.

From my experience, (1) battery life, (2) weight, and (3) resolution are most important factors for a law student.

Battery life must be at least 6-8 hours for normal note-taking and word processing use.

The 2015 MBP 15 can easily last 8 hours. Furthermore, because it has a MagSafe jack it can be powered directly from a DC battery bank with a simple MagSafe to DC barrel plug.

 

[oneMadRssn]

The 2015 MBP 15 can easily last 8 hours. Furthermore, because it has a MagSafe jack it can be powered directly from a DC battery bank with a simple MagSafe to DC barrel plug.

Yes, but the 2015 15" MBP weighs 4.49lbs (2.04kg). The 85W MagSafe2 charger is 1.1lbs (0.5kg). So total weight in a school bag is nearly 5.59lbs (2.54kg). That is not light.

I'm not even going to bother calculating how much that battery bank weighs when you load it up with batteries, surely it is heaver than the 85W MagSafe2 charger itself.

And for a law student, leaving the charger at home is not really a good option. You do not want to run out of juice late at night at the library.

 

[nbritton]

Yes, but the 2015 15" MBP weighs 4.49lbs (2.04kg). The 85W MagSafe2 charger is 1.1lbs (0.5kg). So total weight in a school bag is nearly 5.59lbs (2.54kg). That is not light.

I'm not even going to bother calculating how much that battery bank weighs when you load it up with batteries, surely it is heaver than the 85W MagSafe2 charger itself.

And for a law student, leaving the charger at home is not really a good option. You do not want to run out of juice late at night at the library.

A soldier has to carry a 40 pound backpack for miles and miles and miles... suck it up.

 

[blesss]

My 2015 rMB with the m5 is perfectly acceptable with that kind of use for me. It's a fantastic portable machine. Great screen, great touchpad, and I happen to really like the keyboard. For light duty you shouldn't notice much difference between one of these and a regular MBP because the m5 chip throttles up very quickly to similar speeds as the more powerful chip - it just can't sustain it for very long - but all of the kind of use you list is 'bursty' in nature so will be handled fine. The comparison with the 2011 machine above is not terribly helpful, IMO, because the MacBook has a much faster SSD and memory subsystem which is a lot of what makes a device 'feel' fast.

Thank you, that was helpful and is in line with what I suspected. And yeah, the other post didn't do much to clear anything up for me, hence why I ignored it.

 

[oneMadRssn]

A soldier has to carry a 40 pound backpack for miles and miles and miles... suck it up.

Yea, being a soldier sucks. Most soldiers will tell you that.

Pretty sure OP isn't going to law school because he wants to be like a soldier.

 

[nbritton]

Thank you, that was helpful and is in line with what I suspected. And yeah, the other post didn't do much to clear anything up for me, hence why I ignored it.

Attorneys were making pleading well before computers even existed, you could do it today on a typewriter if you had too. I can tell you from experience that most of the law is written in books and not accessible from the computer. eBook treatises on the law are very few and far between, and video lectures are non existent. Law education is still very old school. So really any computer with browser and Microsoft word will get you through school. We're talking about style points here.

When your bill rate is $200 you have to make decisions fast and knowing where to prioritize your time. If you were billing out your time right now you would have wasted more money thinking about what computer to buy then the computer is actually worth. Just pick something and move on with the next thing in your life.

[doublepost=1478823873][/doublepost]

Yea, being a soldier sucks. Most soldiers will tell you that.

Pretty sure OP isn't going to law school because he wants to be like a soldier.

You're complaining about having to carry an extra 2 pounds... suck it up. Consider it weight lifting, or is that too much weight for you to lift?

 

[oneMadRssn]

I can tell you from experience that most of the law is written in books and not accessible from the computer.

This is just wrong. 99.9% of materials are available online. In the US, we use LexisNexis and Westlaw primarily. Every published case and treatise, going back to before the founding of the US, and most unpublished cases too. I know they have other similar web-based legal research platforms in the UK.

My billing rate is about double what you said

 

[nbritton]

This is just wrong. 99.9% of materials are available online. In the US, we use LexisNexis and Westlaw primarily. Every published case and treatise, going back to before the founding of the US, and most unpublished cases too. I know they have other similar web-based legal research platforms in the UK.

My billing rate is about double what you said

Sure that's great if you have a subscription to LexisNexis and Westlaw. I don't, and if you're counting your pennies for a MBP then you certainly can't afford a subscription to those services. Perhaps the situation has changed in the last few years, but the last I knew those services cost several hundreds of dollars a month.

 

[boateng]

Does the 15' 2015 come have a USB C port?

 

[nbritton]

Does the 15' 2015 come have a USB C port?

Nope, not a one. You can get USB Type-A to USB Type-C cables through: http://www.apple.com/shop/product/HHSM2ZM/B/belkin-usb-a-to-usb-c-cable-usb-31

 

[monkeydax]

I'm not sure what you mean for graphics performance of the Intel devices. I have never had an issue with them for basic tasks, even the graphics in my base model Early 2011 MBP 15 is suitable for everyday 2D things. The only issue you really run into is if you want to game or use it for rendering. The 2015 MBP 15 will run GTA 5 at around 40 fps.

I think the problem lies with the need to power that many pixels with the Retina display through the iGPU. Early mid 2012 rMBPs (with intel HD graphics 4000?) seemed to have some issue with basic transitions and effects within MacOS because it's iGPU was underpowered and the dGPU doesn't kick in for basic OS transitions. Now that we're losing Iris Pro as the iGPU, I'm not sure if the general experience on say...Safari, launching mission control and things like that are going to see some decreased smoothness.

 

[oneMadRssn]

Sure that's great if you have a subscription to LexisNexis and Westlaw. I don't, and if you're counting your pennies for a MBP then you certainly can't afford a subscription to those services. Perhaps the situation has changed in the last few years, but the last I knew those services cost several hundreds of dollars a month.

They're free for law students. Always have been.

 

[nbritton]

They're free for law students. Always have been.

Even if you're not enrolled in law school? How would someone like me (an engineer) get access to them? I've always had an interest in the law but I've found it very difficult to get access to educational materials unless you are a law student or work in a firm. As an outsider, I always seen it as secretive. For instance, if you search youtube for law lectures you'll come up with an extremely limited number of resources. Video lectures of actual law classes just don't seem to exist on the Internet.

 

[oneMadRssn]

Even if you're not enrolled in law school? How would someone like me (an engineer) get access to them? I've always had an interest in the law but I've found it very difficult to get access to educational materials unless you are a law student or work in a firm. As an outsider, I always seen it as secretive. For instance, if you search youtube for law lectures you'll come up with an extremely limited number of resources. Video lectures of actual law classes just don't seem to exist on the Internet.

Yes, I think you have to be enrolled in an accredited law school to get access to Lexis or WestLaw for free.

It's really not too different from benefits engineering students get. I was an engineer prior to becoming a lawyer (Mechie). Now with those blended, I am a patent attorney. I remember getting all sorts of free subscriptions to services that normally cost money while in engineering school. I had access to JStor and Ebsco for researching scientific journal articles. I had a free student versions of Solidworks, Pro/E, and Cadence through my school. Law school is the same. It's not about being secretive, it's just about providing the free demos to the relevant students. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that some music students, for example, get access to some music-related software or services I am not even aware of.

As for accessing the law, I agree it should be more available to the public. The best free resources that I use often are:

Google Scholar offers quite a lot of case law that is searchable.
https://www.law.cornell.edu is a good resource for federal statutes.
Some states have decent websites for their state statutes, some websites are not so good.
Google Patents is the best patent search I am aware of, better than the paid services even.​

The main thing Lexis and WestLaw provide is their citation links and analysis. The case itself is usually findable for free, but knowing whether it is a good case requires knowing whether and how it has been cited, what the trends are, etc. Lexis and WestLaw provide this added analytical data. I see the case, but I also see which sentences or paragraphs are cited often by judges and how they are cited; from this I can discover more relevant cases and learn more about the topic. They also offer access to treatises and scholarly articles, that are not findable for free.

If you want to see free law lectures, Stanford University has a great collection of law school lectures on iTunes U, in addition to their engineering lectures there as well.

 

[Ender17]

15 inch for quad core CPU

 

[boateng]

Is the iMac a better option than the macbook pro 15, 2015'

 

[jackoatmon]

Both bad buys for your use case.

The regular MacBook 12" is going to serve you much better.

If you don't need the power, and you're just doing word processing, get a light, cheap machine, incentivising portability, increasing utility. Why waste 800 pounds and a bunch of extra weight in your bag for functionality you'll never, ever use.

 

[boateng]

Both bad buys for your use case.

The regular MacBook 12" is going to serve you much better.

If you don't need the power, and you're just doing word processing, get a light, cheap machine, incentivising portability, increasing utility.

I dont need the portability tbh
the laptop will sit on my desk most of the time....I make notes with my hands at uni....I also prefer a bigger screen....the 12 inch macbook screen is too small....plus what the point of buying an external monitor?

 

[jackoatmon]

I dont need the portability tbh
the laptop will sit on my desk most of the time....I make notes with my hands at uni....I also prefer a bigger screen....the 12 inch macbook screen is too small....plus what the point of buying an external monitor?

Then get a desktop !

Just seems like MBP is exactly the wrong computer for you.

But follow your heart.

 

[boateng]

Then get a desktop !

Just seems like MBP is exactly the wrong computer for you.

But follow your heart.

yeah just have to make sure i make the right purchase! the iMac is supposed to be getting refreshed soon as well

 

[Trixs]

You want the 2015 MacBook Pro 15 with ether the 2.5GHz or 2.8GHz processor (only these two have AMD Radeon R9 M370X) and 512GB or 1024GB disk. I think the 2015 MBP 15 2.8GHz 16GB 512GB is the best bang for the buck, with student pricing it is going for $2,349. I do not recommend the 256GB, based on experience this is just too small for a device that will last you for the next 5 to 10 years.

2015 MacBook Pro 15 Student Pricing:

• 2.5GHz 512GB: $2,196
• 2.5GHz 1024GB: $2,529
• 2.8GHz 512GB: $2,349
• 2.8GHz 1024GB: $2,709 <-- I just bought this one because it's the most future proof.

Here is a performance comparison of the 2015 MBP 15 2.8GHz vs 2016 MBP 15 2.7GHz:
https://browser.primatelabs.com/v4/cpu/compare/990489?baseline=925386

As you can see in the link the 2015 and 2016 are very comparable; the 2015 has the performance edge, it costs $564 less, and has ports.

Here is a performance comparison of the 2015 MBP 15 2.8GHz vs the 2016 MBP 13 base model:
https://browser.primatelabs.com/v4/cpu/compare/990489?baseline=1000384

As you can see in the link the 2015 wipes the floor with the 2016 13-inch with over twice the Multi-Core performance and also faster Single-Core performance (3656 vs 4286). The 2015 MBP 15 2.5GHz 512GB is only $376 more then the 2016 MBP 13 2.0GHz 512GB 16GB... double the performance for only $376, and you get ports, a better keyboard, better speakers, and AMD Radeon graphics.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B84n60csy_WqV015bC1KV3BVMEU

Differences between the 2014 and 2015 model:

• The 2014 SSD has a PCIe 2.0 x2 interface (1,000 MB/s).
• The 2015 SSD has a PCIe 3.0 x4 interface (3,940 MB/s).

• The 2014 has a Nvidia GeForce GT 750M w/ 2GB GDDR5.
• The 2015 has a AMD Radeon R9 M370X w/ 2GB GDDR5.

• The 2014 supports two 2560x1600 displays.
• The 2015 supports two 3840x2160 displays.

• The 2014 has a 95 Wh battery.
• The 2015 has a 99.5 Wh battery.

• The 2014 has a Broadcom BCM4360 (April 2012).
• The 2015 has a Broadcom BCM43602 (June 2014, w/CPU Offloading).

• The 2014 has a idle wattage of 16.7 watts.
• The 2015 has a idle wattage of 12.7 watts.

He is doing word, Web browsing and Netflix lol. Who cares about benchmarks. Would be perfectly fine for another 5 years with last year's macbook air..

 

[boateng]

such a dilemma what to buy

the iMac or the macbook pro 15

 

[Ender17]

15.4 for the increased resolution and screen size.

 

[boateng]

15.4 for the increased resolution and screen size.

huh? which one?

 

[EgGKeith]

15 inch is much better.
The 13inch Macbook Pro is just a joke.