Which Macbook Pro?

[Matt-London]

I am thinking of buying a new 13" Macbook Pro and probably going to go for the basic one - 2.2Ghz / 160Gig / 2Gb ram. However, just checked my imac and it has 2.6Ghz processor. So my question is, will I notice much difference using the laptop compared to my iMac?

My normal usage consists of email / web / photos / watching some dvd's. For example at the moment I have both safari & firefox running with 11tabs in total, Spotify, itunes, iphoto, mail & calender.

Would the MBP be able to handle all that with 2Gig ram and 2.2Ghz processor?

Thanks

 

[Doju]

Easily. Even if it doesn't, a 4GB RAM update is very easy and cheap.

Clock speed of a processor isn't all that matters, processor technology evolves, and a processor with a technically faster clock speed could be amazingly slower than a technically slower clock speed if it's newer (like the MBP is). For instance, I have a 3.2GHz Pentium HP that is destroyed by my 2.53GHz MacBook Pro.

No doubt. Get it.

 

[Hellhammer]

Easily. Even if it doesn't, a 4GB RAM update is very easy and cheap.

Clock speed of a processor isn't all that matters, processor technology evolves, and a processor with a technically faster clock speed could be amazingly slower than a technically slower clock speed if it's newer (like the MBP is). For instance, I have a 3.2GHz Pentium HP that is destroyed by my 2.53GHz MacBook Pro.

No doubt. Get it.

But both are Core 2 Duo (Penryn) so iMac does have faster CPU but it won't affect OP's usage really.

Get the RAM though, it'll speed things up a lot

 

[clyde2801]

Unless you're doing something really processor intensive all day (like FCP or encoding videos with handbrake), Mr. Data wouldn't be able to tell the difference in the speed of the two machines.

Macworld tested the 2.26 using 2 and 4 gigs of ram, and found the performance difference between the two to be negligible. You should only get the 4 gigs if your average usage will 'exhaust' the 2 gigs that comes with it and forces your machine to use its hard drive. When you're using your imac, what does activity monitor tell you about your ram usage?

 

[Matt-London]

I normally have at least 25% of my ram available looking at the pie chart in activity monitor and thats with two users logged in.

You mentioned it using hard drive for ram, how does that happen?

 

[gan6660]

Unless you're doing something really processor intensive all day (like FCP or encoding videos with handbrake), Mr. Data wouldn't be able to tell the difference in the speed of the two machines.

Macworld tested the 2.26 using 2 and 4 gigs of ram, and found the performance difference between the two to be negligible. You should only get the 4 gigs if your average usage will 'exhaust' the 2 gigs that comes with it and forces your machine to use its hard drive. When you're using your imac, what does activity monitor tell you about your ram usage?

I have the 2.26 MBP and I encode videos using handbrake all the time. Now if I got the 2.53 version it would convert the videos faster?

 

[chill.]

I normally have at least 25% of my ram available looking at the pie chart in activity monitor and thats with two users logged in.

You mentioned it using hard drive for ram, how does that happen?

if all 2 gigs of memory is getting used, then data will start getting written to the hard drive, which is much slower than ram. the pie chart is not such a good indicator, you want to look at how many "page outs" you have. if you have a lot, then that means that you are capping out on ram and would probably benefit from an upgrade

for your needs though, the macbook should run fine on 2 gb