Which MBP 15" refurb - unibody or prior model?

[InfoTime]

I've been considering buying a MacBook Pro in the next month or two. I'm totally fine with refurbished units from the Apple Online Store. There's always a basic model for $1,699. Occasionally they'll have the previous basic model for $1,349. They had them for a short time yesterday.

I really like the idea of the way the new aluminum MacBook Pros are made and I like how easy it is to change the hard drive. They're also a little bit faster than the prior model. Other than that I don't know of any significant advantages of the new model over the prior one.

The prior model's keyboard is more appealing to me. Saving another $350 is also appealing. Also, this model may support a total of 8 GB or DDR2/667 RAM?

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/573906/

Will my MacBook (Pro) support up to 8GB?
- Only the Santa Rosa and Penryn (MacBook (Pro) 3,1 and 4,1) can support this much memory. The MacBook (Pro) 2,1 only supports upto 3.25GB ram accessible so adding in 8GB wouldn't matter since you can only access >4GB.

See also http://guides.macrumors.com/MacBook_Pro

Here's a little comparison chart I put together:

Is there anything about either model that would influence your decision?

 

[h0e0h]

ddr3, muli-touch with 4 finger gestures and upgraded graphics card made the $350 jump for me.

 

[dacreativeguy]

Computers have a really short life span in terms of being on the cutting edge. New software and peripherals are always designed for the latest and greatest, so you can find yourself wishing for a better machine pretty quickly if you buy cheap. Therefore, buy the best you can afford. It will put off your perception (and actuality) of having an obsolete machine just a little longer.

 

[emt1]

The 8600M GT will eventually fail, it's just a matter of when.

 

[Shawny D]

Unibody.

It's better-built, uses faster DDR3 memory, and, unlike the previous-gen MBP, it's HDD is officially user-upgradeable.

 

[Koodauw]

I say the unibody as well. I think they have a much better battery as well.

 

[GrindedDown]

Unibody all day everyday, especially this close to WWDC. The reason I say this is that when Snow Leopard is released, with the technology they are using for it with Grand Central and OpenCL, you will supposedly be able to make use of both GPUs at the same time (as opposed to one at a time) to enhance your experience. The benefit of this is that despite using shared video memory, each GPU would utilized for functions that are best suited to it.

i.e. - the 9600GT card would be used to hand all monitor and intense graphics processing while the 9400 would be used for basic applications such as Safari and what not, thusly increasing your computer's overall performance power.

This is not really a close decision in my mind at all. It would be close if the cost difference was about $600 or more. Don't forget all of the other benefits too such as the multi touch trackpad and backlit keyboard, which is an underestimated feature, but is sooooo huge!